WMSR - Stage 2 - Circuit Race

Tonight was the "queen stage" of the WMSR, the Amesbury Circuit Race. The masters field would be doing five laps of an 8.8 mile circuit, sort of an extended version of the TT course. We had a KOM sprint for cash on the top of the hill every lap to make it interesting, then the plunge down the descent into town before cranking through the 90 degree right hander, with the finish line only about 300 meters or so from the turn.

Traffic was abominable tonight. I left my house at 3:15 and the eighty mile drive took me over two hours. I got ready quickly though, and made the start no problem. As many riders come up through Boston, several were in the same boat. We started off pretty slowly, which was strange for the WMSR. So slowly in fact, that on lap two the Cat 4 pack caught us, and we were neutralized while they overtook our pack. Of course, as always, they slowed down after that and after our KOM sprint we soon caught them, and this time we went by them and the pace of our race was more than enough so that we never saw them again. On narrow roads without police escorts, it was a little hairy. Just ask KL, she was driving our pace car, which happened to be my car that I bought from her. Got it?

There wasn't as much attacking as normal, probably due to us not offering GC points for the KOM this year. Plus, since Bike Link had dominated the TT, they had no reason to attack. Their closest rival, Patrick Ruane from Sunapee is a great sprinter, so he and his powerful squadra were also content to keep it together. The other top GC contenders did not have strong teams for this event, (Donnie Mills is Cat 1 from FiordaFrutta, but he was the only one here, as most of his mates are too young, and Tyler Munroe CCB-Evil Empire didn't have all of his support riders either). Then there was us.

After the re-passing of the Cat 4 pack, I took one for the host team by just going to the front and drilling it for several k's, drawing us away. Shortly after that, a promising break did form with Tyler, Donnie, Tobi Schultze (Bike Link) and Charlie Bedard (Sunapee), and the Cronoman bridged across before it got too far along. Since every team was represented, no hard chase ensued, but Bike Link did not have their GC guys in there, so they were on the front keeping it close. The Cronoman realized it was futile when the breakaways started attacking each other on the hill, so he put up the flag and me and John Diehl went to the front as he came back, and the three of us brought the gap down to about 10 seconds. We wanted to leave them out there to get cooked if possible, but I guess we brought the pack too close as they soon all sat up and came back.

On the last lap we had a pretty good BOB train going. I went to the front on the first descent (that leads to the "big" climb) and surfed from Charlie Bedard to Colman O'Connor's(Bike Link) wheels before beginning the climb. On the false flat there was an increase in pace for the KOM sprint, but I was going well and hit the descent second. At this point I kind of botched it, as I didn't realize that Duano was in tow the whole time. We were bombing down the hill with 1K to go, and I was getting cooked, so I eased. At this point some riders came around and Duane yelled to me to try and get going to keep us from getting boxed in. We're doing 65 kph down the bumpy hill and the bikes were getting pretty wide because there were a lot of elbows and jockeying for position. If I'd have known Duano was there I could have totally spent myself drawing it out into the corner. As it was we bounced through there, but Ranger Rusnak got through on the outside just behind the Bike Link train, and Duano got a little chopped on the inside, losing some momentum. I went through behind Duane, way inside, losing some speed but staying safe. The sprint wound up right away, Duano got 7th, Ranger got 9th, and I got 11th, not what we wanted, but we all got points.

Going into tommorow, Ranger's 7th and 9th have put him in the money, 5th on GC. My 8th and 11th have me 7th on GC, one spot out of a payday. Ranger is in a pretty good spot as not too many fast people are in a position to overtake him, other than Shultze in 6th, and me in 7th. The other guys ahead of us are not too vulnerable, so it will be very difficult for me to move into the money without pushing Ranger out. Either way, at least it will be in the team. So tommorow night will not be so much about racing for money as it will for pride, and trying to preserve or improve my GC spot, as well as Ranger's. The points race is nuts, but I've done it enough times to not be afraid of it. I know what to do... Thanks for reading, maybe tommorow night I'll get some (crappy) pictures.