Sterling classic cat 4/5 - Mark Theeman 5-18-07
Cat 4/5 U35 (24mi)
The Riders:
Mark Theeman(me)
Brian Campbell
Colby Ricker
Alex Dossin
Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day for racing, and NEBC showed up with one of the largest numbers. We got to take 3 laps on the nice rolling Sterling course. The first 2 laps were somewhat uneventfull, a few small breaks went off and being such a short race, I chased a few, and spent some time on the front of the main pack, but none of these small breaks lasted. On the last lap, I dont think it was so much of a brekaway, as a split in the pack and 14 of so riders became the lead pack, which consisted of all 4 of our team. The lead pack kept descent speed approaching the finish, though nothing crazy as everyone knew it would come down to a pack sprint up the that nice little hill finish. Unfortunately, in the last couple miles, I felt a firm rub on my rear tire followed by sound of bike-crashing, which when I turned around to asses the damage, discovered it was our teamamte, Alex. Fortunately, after the race, we found him to be, though a little scraped up, not seriously injured.
Closing in on the hill finish, I stayed near the front and shot off the front coming around tight on the right-hand turn into the hill, a few pedal strokes later though I remembered that the hill was not quite as short as it seemed the 2 previous laps, and that I may have gotten out of the siddle slightly too early. However, it was too late to correct, so i was left with pounding up the hill and settled into a firm 5th place finish at the line. Brian and Colby rounded off the top 10 a few seconds behind me, finishing 9th and 10th respectively, and Alex made it in the top half of the feild despite his tumble in the last few miles of the race.
All in all not a bad showing for NEBC in the cat4/5 U35 with 3 out of 4 riders in the top 10, 2 out 3 of which were I believe cat5’s. See everyone at Lake sunapee this weekend.