CAT 3 Report
The course was an 11.4 mile loop we would traverse four and ¾ times for a 53 mile race. ECV was looking pretty sharp with Pete Smith, Kyle Smith, and myself all signed up to toe the line in the blue and white. I caught a ride up to the race with Cat 4 ecv all stars, Pierre and Mike. Being the first uscf race of the season for me, it felt good to be back in the soon to be all too familiar parking lot warm up/staging area. The start turned out to be about a seven-minute ride from the parking lot, and although Kyle decided to tempt fate a little, we all made it to the line with time to spare. With limited waste of mental exertion we decided the best strategy with just three guys would be to wait and see what was what once the race was underway. The course had one climb worth mentioning ¾ of through the loop, and this is where the finish would be. The race started ridiculously slow. With what seemed like 100 guys in the field and a yellow line rule in effect for the entire course, the field was a bit congested. It did, however, provide some time for saying hello to riders I hadn’t seen since cross season. It was hard to keep close to the other ecv’ers and given the general unexciting nature of the first lap, I just focused on staying near the front third of the race. A few limited moves by individual riders were made, but nothing that stuck. Sometime into the second lap, Kyle went to the front and took a number of turns pulling the field, arguably to soften up the legs of our competitors and generally making the race more interesting by keeping the pace reasonably fast. Or maybe he was just stretching the legs out a bit. In either case, his efforts, however, were not quickly taken up by any other teams and the pace seemed to lag when he would come off the front. As we approached the climb for the second time I decided to move to the front myself. I was hoping to drive the pace on the hill in order to maybe help select the field down to a more manageable size. Unfortunately, the entire field stayed firmly glued together. In a similar move on the next lap, Chris Schmidt from Harvard made a strong move near the top. A group of about six or seven formed up in his wake including Kevin Wolfson from Dartmouth, sometime ecv’er Stephen Weller, myself, and a few other riders. Although we had a gap over the top and worked together pretty smoothly the field was back on us before we had been off for more than a few minutes. Knowing that Chris, Stephen, and Kevin, were probably some of the strongest riders in the field, I decided that breaks over the hill were not going to get away in this race and started to change my focus to the eventual uphill sprint finish. It should be mentioned that on the very same lap, a rider had got away solo, during a small near-crash or crash in the field, and stayed away until the final climb. Most of the field seemed pretty uninterested in the solo escapee and he built up a decent lead for about a lap and a half. On the penultimate climb over the finishing hill, however, the front seemed to organize somewhat and pulled the soloist back to within eyesight where he remained until the base of the climb. Pete Smith was spotted on the front at this time taking some long pulls to bring back other individuals who attempted to bridge up and generally keeping the pace high over some rolling hills on the back side of the course. Pete and I discussed him making a countering move when this guy finally came back because with just a couple miles remaining he seemed to about to be re-absorbed. The solo rider, however, sensed the weakness of the resolve of the rest of the field and buried himself, succeeding in heroically but temporarily putting a little more space between himself and us. Harvard Chris took it upon himself to limit the gap and buried himself at the front. I decided the guy had to be cooked and would come back on the climb, short though it was. The whole field was still together, so things started to get dicey approaching the final turn before the mile or so run up to the hill. I managed to get through the corner near the top ten, although the rider in front of me comically, inexplicably, and rather massively overshot the turn and ended up deep in the dirt. When we hit the hill, I moved to about fifth wheel and waited for the fireworks. I had raced up Mt philo just a week earlier and been overcome by Harvard chris in the last quarter mile, and I knew kevin wolfson and stephen weller are no slouches on the steep stuff…so I waited for someone else to initiate. Chris made his move about halfway up the climb. I grabbed his wheel as soon as I saw him go and kevin wolfson and a handful of guys were quick to react. When the road pitched up once more with a quarter mile to go I jumped hard and didn’t sit down until I crested the hill. I kept waiting for someone to come around but the road flattened out and I got back out of the saddle and sprinted hard for the last 100 feet to take my first cat 3 victory. Pete and Kyle both finished up in the field rounding out a solid race for ECV.
CAT 4/5
The Cat 4/5 field found itself split into two fields: a 37+ field and a U37 field. Our race was 41 miles, with 2 and ¾ laps, ending at the top of a half mile climb that we all knew would decide the final placings, and possibly split the field on a mid-race ascent. The field held to a moderate pace the first lap, doing enough work to bring back any little breaks that tried their luck, but not much more. Fellow ECVer Pierre Vanden Borre, misled by the race flyer’s promises of KOM/QOM prizes for the intermediate climbs (um, Pro/1/2 fields only, the small asterisk pointed out), hit the after-burners on the first climb, opening up a sizable gap on the suffering field and taking the 1st virtual KOM. The windy backside of the course again kept the field together, all attacks getting easily reeled in by the field, despite the narrow one-lane road making movement in the field difficult for those wishing to charge hard at the front. I sat squarely in the field again on the climb, PVB charging hard for a second-place KOM, this time with a relatively fast climbing field who seemed convinced that darn ECV kid would get away. He sort of did. PVB and I formed up a 10 to 15 man mini breakaway, whose useful life was severely shortened by lack of cohesion and a downhill headwind. Now back together, the field took to enjoying the weather, leisurely sometimes-pedaling through the rolling back sections of the course. With 1.5 miles to go, I took my chances in the wind, attacking hard just before the final corner before the climb. As with all attacks on this windy day, I was reeled in just at the base of the climb as the field opened up their legs on the hill, spitting me out the back embarrassingly quickly. PVB, now recovered from his KOM workouts, surged up the climb with the field, knocking down Cat 4/5 pins as he went to take a well-deserved 8th overall and cinching the virtual-KOM competition handily.