Grand Prix of Beverly Crit
We did it again!
The NEBC women once again enjoyed the short drive to race a local crit around downtown Beverly. New flat course with the start/finish going north on Cabot St. in front of a big brick church followed by a tight right-left-right series of corners and back around the Beverly Common to Dane St then Hale St and back to Cabot. Course was fun with the corners and it was the first person through the last corner who would walk away the winner was what we determined during warm-up.
A lot of the same players from last night on the start line including the former Olympians Lyne Bessette and Nicole Freedman. On the first lap, Lyne took the lead until Brooke decided to spice it up early with an attack and pushed the pace for the first lap and a half. Then Rebecca took the front and had the field strung out for a few laps, almost dropping Brooke from the field in the process. Clara also used the first few laps to warm up fully. Once everyone settled in, Clara and Brooke took turns attack and counter-attacking. Our only prime, a case of Redbull, was called early in the race and Rebecca went for it just to confirm where to jump for the finish. She easily won the prime and we continued on with attacking for the rest of the race. We also successfully covered all moves from the rest of the field. A field sprint would be fine for us this evening. No breakaways stuck, but we made the rest of the field work hard in the process.
Fast forward to the last few laps – Clara attacked and held the field at bay for a lap or two around 5 laps to go while Brooke saton Lyne’s wheel. Once Lyne finally caught Clara, Brooke countered and took the lead and tried to keep the pace high with 3 and 2 laps to go. As soon as she petered out, Clara took charge again at the front until about a half lap to go when the rest of the field starting getting ancy. On the second to last corner, Brooke managed to find enough energy left to come to the front on the right side and try to get Lyne to jump early. While Lyne was distracted on the right, Rebecca let out a tremendous jump up the left side and immediately put a gap on the field. Going into the last corner, Rebecca had at least 5 bike lengths on the field and easily held onto that gap to nab yet another NEBC team victory.
Rebecca’s comment at the end to the announcer Richard Fries was that it was a real team victory and all she had to do was sprint at the end. :-)