Turtle Pond Men's 1/2 - Roy Van Cleef - 4-13-08
Peter Bradshaw
Todd Rowell
Roy Van Cleef
The forecast for rain didn’t manifest itself so the roads stayed clear for the duration of the race but it was still a brisk 47 degrees and completely overcast. After the first run up the hill Peter established himself at the front of the group and shortly thereafter Todd and I moved up to join him. There were a couple of promising surges but it wasn’t until about mile 4 that a group of about 5 went off the front. I was at the head of the peleton and they were only 30 yards ahead so I accelerated hard and closed the gap bringing a few more riders across with me. The 9 of us quickly established a rotating paceline and soon had a reasonable gap.
Back in the pack Peter ran in to some bad luck and double flatted but didn’t seem to have too much trouble catching back on. A lap or 2 later on their way up the hill the peleton was passing a solo masters rider who ended up pulling off in to the gravel, lost his balance, fell towards the group and literally landed against Peter. Peter was able to stay upright by putting a foot down and then rode off in search of the next obstacle.
Back in the lead group the pace eased up a little and I was trying to conserve as much energy as possible but each time up the hill was pretty brutal and we would lose one rider each lap. With about 12 miles to go we were down to six. Fiordifrutta, Kenda and Noreast were represented along with Aidan (Nerac), Gavin (Hottubes) and I. I was pretty wasted but decided to go hard up the hill just to stay with the lead riders as I didn’t want to go the final 10 miles alone and we still had no idea how far back the pack was.
Aidan, Fiordi and Kenda crested first with Gavin and I only a few yards back. We came together in a single paceline to drop the Norest rider. The pace picked up again and I was doing my best just to hang on and with about 6 miles to go on one of the little rises the Fiordi rider opened up a little gap. Aidan and Kenda went off in pursuit and Gavin and I limped after them knowing that we didn’t have the horsepower to catch them but just hoping to limit the deficit and not get hauled in by the pack. Those final miles were really hard but, ironically enough, I was very happy to see the turn going into the hill. We literally crawled up the hill. Gavin opened up a little gap and I was quite happy to let him go so I could settle for 5th and just glad that it was over.
The rest of the field was broken up but both Peter and Todd came finished in the top 30 riders.
Roy