Clamtastic Race Report
Yarmouth Clam Festival
Yarmouth, ME
Rebecca Wellons – 1st
Brooke O’Connor – 4th
Natalie Dumont – 5th
Clara Kelly – 10th
For the past few years, the NEBC Elite women’s team has put the Yarmouth Clam Fest race on our schedule and made the trek up to Maine to clean house with the primes and finish, and afterwards to do a little shopping at the Clam Festival and the Maine outlet stores. This year was no different.
How it unfolded…
The pre-registration list had some stiffer competition this year, but we had returning champ and time trial motor Rebecca Wellons, student turned professional physical therapist (finally!) Natalie Dumont, climber extraordinaire Clara Kelly, and team director/lead-out woman Brooke O’Connor. We were pleasantly joined in the race by our strong cat 2/3 teammates Carola Berger, Cathy Rowell and Katherine Snell.
Lap 1: After a neutral first lap to remember fallen cyclist Cary Girod, the men and then the women took off for the rest of our laps. As is tradition with the Clam Fest, every lap of the 3.6 mile circuit is a prime lap. So the bell rang and off we went. Coming around the first lap, Carola took off on attack on the 3 step climb on the backside of the course. She held that move until the short, steep uphill after the last turn, when the field caught her. Brooke and Natalie were lined up and once everyone got to the top of the hill onto the flat, Brooke jumped the field to the right and led out Nat to grab the first prime. Anna McLoon (Altarum) used the leadout to sneak 2nd place in the prime. After the prime, Nat, Brooke, Anna and Rebecca had a bit of a gap on the field. Brooke called to Rebecca to keep going, while Brooke and Nat recovered from the sprint.
Lap 2: Rebecca and Anna off the front with Danielle Ruane from Sunapee bridging across and joining them. With the two major teams (NEBC and Sunapee) represented in the break, and Clara and Brooke patrolling the front of the field sitting 2nd or 3rd wheel and covering attempted bridges, the break quickly gained minutes over the next couple of laps. There were some valiant attempts from the rest of the field to organize a chase, but nothing was realized. Rebecca won the prime at the end of this lap from her breakaway group.
Lap 3-4: The break gained more time on the field, and Rebecca won more primes.
Lap 5: Rebecca got a gap on her 2 breakaway companions, grabbed the prime and then continued on and left them in the dust. Anna broke away from Danielle and thus the 3 were separated for the last two laps.
Lap 6: Rebecca easily won the race by a minute holding off the chasing Anna. The field had Danielle in our sights on the start of the 6th lap, so Clara went to the front and increased the pace with the help of some other people. Brooke and Nat talked again about repeating the lead-out from earlier in the race. We never caught Danielle, but coming up the last short uphill, Nat stayed on Brooke’s wheel until we got up on the flat. Brooke was unsure when to jump, but once Nat started seeing the shadows of opponents coming up on the sides, she yelled to Brooke to go. Brooke jumped to the left of the field, shifted down into her biggest gear, head down and dug deep to give the fastest leadout possible to Nat. Nat recognized that the leadout was fast enough that no one was coming around and let Brooke win the field sprint with Nat finishing right behind for 4th and 5th place. After all of Clara’s hard work during the race and the pace pushing in the last lap, she still grabbed 10th.
Mission accomplished yet again: Won all the 1st place primes and the race, as well as 4th, 5th, and 10th place. We’ll be back next year!!!!