GMSR—sidebar

Rhonda Morin of Portland Velo was a bit more on the ball with her race report—it's up on her team's site.

Rhonda and her teammate Jen Bailey were right in there all weekend, and it's fun to read her take on the same race (albeit a little further up than I was!).

GMSR Prologue by Emma

"The prologue was a total of 8.1 miles (7.3 miles of it - 1730 foot elevation gain). I managed to stay with the front pack for maybe half of that, and then I lost steam. What an understatement! I couldn't feel my legs and my lungs were rebelling mercilessly. Meanwhile, my amazing teammates, Andrea and Liz, whizzed by me in the final 2 kms, and I was both in awe and despondency. Well, maybe they didn't whiz, but they were moving forward and I was somehow riding backwards. Liz finished 19th, Andrea 22nd, and I crossed the line 25th. The winner was a very nice lady from Toronto, Ann Thompson. By the way, the Cat 4 winner's time was approximately the same as one of the last riders in the Pro/1/2/3 field. Can you say, "scared to upgrade?""

— Emma

Green Mountain Girls—Overview

The 4 days of Labor Day weekend, based at Sugarbush ski resort. A late addition to the season, only three of us were able to make the trip—Emma, Andrea and myself. We shared a condo with Sheila O’Connor of East End/Kreb’s Cycle, and were joined by Kelleigh Dulany (Sanchez-Metro), Rachel Leiderman (Radical Media) and Angela Johnson (Axis) in the Cat 4 women’s field. Kelleigh & Rachel had done the event before; we hadn’t. I’m not completely certain who was better off in that situation!

Day 1: 8 mile prologue from the center of Waitsfield, VT to the top of the Appalacian Gap. Once we started racing on Route 17, it was all uphill.
Day 2: Called a circuit race, I argue the definition. 17-mile circuit, one long hill; our field did 2 and 2/3 laps—the finish line was 5 miles away from the start line.
Day 3: Mad River Glen Road Race. 64 miles of road racing pleasure. Two mountain gaps, and a finish at the top of the App Gap (having come up the other side this time.) Not a day for the sprinters (or flatlanders!).
Day 4: Burlington Criterium. Short six-corner course with the start/finish on a hill.

The weekend was points-based, rather than time—plus sprint and climbers points were applied to the overall, so race leaders needed to be aware of these intermediate points as well or risk losing the jersey. A smart racer could leverage their strengths and minimize their weaknesses by understanding and maximizing the points structure. But in short? A hard race all around.

Late race reports—Thater

Chris Thater Memorial Races, Binghamton, NY
August 28 & 29

The one thing everyone remembers about Binghamton is the hill. It’s not all that imposing a hill, just a little thing about two blocks long rising about 100’, but after you go up it 20-odd times, it can wear on you.

Saturday
There were 22 of us on the line for the women’s cat 3/4 race, including several other CRCA riders besides Emma & I. It started off fast, and I was challenged to stay with the group the first few laps. Lisa Jellett (Cranford Bike/CTS) attacked on the hill about half-way through the race, and managed to pull off a solo win, leaving the rest of us to sprint for second. Ellen took 6th, Emma took 9th, I took 10th.

Sunday
On Sunday, the pros came out to play—Chris Thater is an NRC event. The course was extended a little further up the hill to add two more corners, and a little more challenge. The women’s 3/4 race was right after the Pro men and on the course (but not with) the Pro/1/2 women. I was the only Swanky racing Sunday, but had plenty of CRCA (and Hell’s Kitchen) friends in the group. Again, we started off quick, but thanks to Saturday’s race, it was easier to predict the flow of the race. And thanks to the pro women passing us, we were neutralized twice allowing for some real mid-race recovery. Lisa tried to repeat her Saturday attack on the hill several times, with little success. Leslie Jennings (Radical Media) and I countered Lisa’s final attack at 2 to go, and got (wait for it….) about 1 second on the group before getting reeled back in on the backside of the course with plenty of time to set-up for the finish. She took 2nd; I took 6th in a hard-fought sprint and Ellen was 9th.

As always, a great event. Everyone is really nice, very helpful, and the entire weekend is just nicely put together. Kudos to the organizers and the city of Binghamton.

Swanky's September Shindig

[ed. note—isn't a shindig part of what I did last weekend? ouch!]

Meg writes:

September - more rain, (nothing new there) and with it, fall is rapidly approaching SOOOO Swanky's figured it was the perfect time to invite CRCA to a little FIESTA—what better way to celebrate from your efforts at Mengoni!  

Senor Swanky's "sycling senoritas" will be your hosts to rave about your season and take note as you lay claim on next year's expected results! 

September 25th
5:00 pm
Senor Swanky's "aka Celebrity Hangout"
513 Columbus (84th/85th) (the NEW location!)

Mr.Swanky himself has generously offered 10% off of food to all CRCA members - who can resist a tasty AND cheap enchilada?! Surely not a cyclist prepping for winter?! 

One more thing for the novices

Pin your race number on twice through each corner. Don't use the holes, they're irrelevant. Don't just stick the safety pin through willy-nilly, it's 'number, fabric, fabric, number, fasten'. It's really quite simple, it keeps your number from flapping around, makes it easier for the officials to read, and doesn't tear off as easily when you crash. (Not 'if', 'when'.) Personally, I'm a fan of six safety pins, but some people are happy with four and others can't live without the full eight. You can choose how ever many you like, just stop the flapping!

On a related note, those of you with long hair, braids, ponytails, whatnot? Pull it up and out of the way. Go watch a video replay of a sprint sometime (especially a black and white replay) and you'll understand why. Numbers are hard enough to read without adding to the confusion.

Anyone have any other pieces of advice they'd like to offer up?

Nowhere To Run To

Tour de Parc, Wantaugh, Long Island
1 mile loop with a tight 180' turn soon after the start/finish and a small rise at the other end of the teardrop-shaped course.

(An actual report written on the day it actually happened. Shocking!)

First off, a tip to all race promoters in shouting distance of Manhattan—if your race is accessible by the LIRR, MetroNorth, NJTransit or flue, say so on your flyer! I'm not in the habit of guaranteeing things I can't control, but if a rider doesn't need to check a map to figure out whether or not a train runs nearby, it makes sense that those cool, environmentally-minded (ok, or cheap) racer kids might be more inclined to show up.

That being said, Charlie I. put on an excellent race.

The womens field was, unfortunately, small and combined with the juniors. 13 of us total. I got dropped in the turn after carefully marking Ann-Marie Miller's wheel for the better part of the race. Time-trialed the rest alone and ended up 9th. (According to Ann-Marie [who, by the way, won the womens 123 Green Mountain Road Race in a solo breakaway. If you haven't read those race reports at cyclingnews.com or racelistings.com, you're missing out on some good stuff], the field let the NeXT junior escape and then sprinted for second. She took fifth.)

Since I was there, I raced the category 4/5 race. The lessons learned here were many, but the most essential is if you don't have to race this field, don't. Despite my careful riding, I was run off the road when caught behind one crash coming out of the 180' turn, and was knocked off my bike at two laps to go when a rider behind me couldn't hold a line that didn't involve my rear wheel. Once the pileup on top of me was gone, and it was confirmed that the work of Drs' Pelham and Stern remained untouched, I got to hike back to the pit where Ray of Brands Cycle put my bike back into rideable condition. Thanks, Ray, and everyone involved in the race!

And hooray for Tegaderm!

Aquafina Series Finale

It was a long, hard battle (especially that last race in the pouring rain), but after all was said and done, Swanky's took second and third in the Aquafina Cat 4 women's series! Part of the Cycling Made Real series, this six-race series was a priority for our team—we couldn't think of a better way to support the promotors and sponsors who were behind putting on events to encourage novice women bike racers. We absolutely attended events we might not have otherwise, and found all of them to be well organized and completely worthwhile.

Riding into the Capital Region road race (aka, Albany), Emma and I were floating just outside the top five. Thanks to the aforementioned weather, and the distance from New York, several of the top ranked riders decided not to attend. Their loss! Wendy Cohen of Hell's Kitchen turned out to be just out of reach, but our finishes were enough to pull Emma and I up the rankings and onto the podium (as it were). We're delighted, and even more more so to see how many women participated in the series—more than 55 riders in the Cat 4 series alone, including seven Swankys. These were tough riders, and tough races, so we congratulate and thank everyone involved—we hope you'll do it again next year!

Green Mountain Girls

Chris Thater Memorial (Binghamton) and full Green Mountain Stage Race reports to follow, but it seemed like a good time to mention that after four days of racing in the incredibly hilly state of Vermont, Swanky's placed two riders in the top 10 of the general classification (GC), and had a total of 5 top ten finishes.

We're really tired now.