Turtle Pond Cat 3 Men's Report - 4-16-08
>From Peter Shapiro
This was a pretty fast course with one mile-long hill before the finish, followed by a lot of rollers. There was one tricky, 120 something degree turn that the front of the pack missed on the first lap. A CLNoonan kid crossed himself everytime we came to this turn. He did this quite a lot during the race (going across the yellow line too).
The winning two-man break (BikeReg and BRC) took off early in the race and we did not expect it to last. Major props to them. We chased, and BRC did some blocking. With lots of people sitting on at the back of the field, I attacked up the hill with two laps to go, hoping to round up a small chase group. I didnt get a good enough gap on the field and we were all back together on the downhill to race for third. Coming into final right hand turn I was about fifteen riders back and sprinted for sixth place.
>From Julian Gent
Not much to say here. I finished which is much better than last year where I lasted one lap. So despite the miserable showing it is an improvement over last year.
>From Scott Brooks
The race was five laps, with an “extra” climb up the big hill. Not being a hill climber, my plan was to work for my teammates John and Peter. Within the first 20 miles, there were a couple of small attacks, which the NEBC team did a great job of covering. Somewhere around mile 22 though, two riders went off the front and everyone watched. Kudos to Chris B of BRC, who sat on the front of the race for the next 2o miles or so blocking. Seems that while the weather was cool, and we were all at a race, everyone just wanted to ride and talk about the winter. My teammates and I tried several times to bring the two leaders back, but every time that we rotated through the paceline, Chris B showed up at the front and slowed everyone down.
With two riders gone, we changed plans and went for third place.
Setting up a good pace going into the final turn, I burnt my final
half smoking match and got the hell out of the way. The good, Peter
took sixth. The bad, Scott was far enough from the pack to be time
gapped! The ugly, Mike R not showing up early enough to get some pics
of us racing and gets me just trying to hold the pack on the final
climb unsuccessfully._