Tour of Southern New England

Lots of stuff to write about, so I'm taking a head start tonight. For sure some of this will spill into another post because I've got some pictures but they were offloaded onto a different computer and I don't feel like booting it up right now.

Having lived here my entire life, and for many reasons having traveled the area's backroads by bike, car, and truck for decades, there aren't too many places in New England that I'm totally unfamiliar with. This weekend, however, I visited two. First up was Hartford, CT. Yeah, sure, I've passed through it dozens of times on the highway, but other than the ghetto stretch of US 44 that used to head to some cross races up near Canton, I'd never been off the interstate. Saturday we went to race at the Hartford Criterium. There are lots of crits in Connecticut, but I've always chosen to skip them. This time, I needed a race (Wompatuck having been down for two weeks due to Exeter and the holiday), and Harford fit the bill. The venue was roads around a very nice park adjacent to the state house. The state house itself is quite an impressive piece of architecture, and the grounds around it were adorned with tons of ornate sculpture. The city also seemed to be quite a bit bigger than I expected. I'm thinking it may even be bigger than Providence, which would make it the second biggest city in New England. Maybe not. Anyhow, this was my first trip there, and I thought it was nice. So there is something positive.

The race, well, it was OK. Their course was fine, pretty flat, with the finish on one small rise. The promoting club chose to go sans announcer, and sans pace car, and sans marshalls for that matter. This gave the event a dead feel like a training race, and you really had to pay attention because there were people wandering out into the course all day long. It's a miracle there were no incidents (that I saw anyway).

The turnout was light. Nationals are going on for the masters, and with New Britain the next day, I guess many riders weren't interested. We had only 27 line up for the 40+. Me and the Cronoman (who the Canadians from Terry call "disk wheel dude") represented BOB. I think Bethel had two or three riders, the host team NERAC had three, and the Celtic and Hammer Gel teams had a few each. The 25 lap race started S-L-0-0-W. I hadn't warmed up much, so after two laps I took a flyer to get the legs going. The lethargic field spotted me a huge gap right away. I had no intention of trying to solo the whole way, so I slowed down a bit, and just warmed up. After a few laps someone turned up the juice and my 300 meters evaporated in an instant. After a little shadow boxing and a few semi-serious aggresssions, some guy took off and rolled away looking good. We never saw him again, despite a few nice pulls by myself, the Cronoman, and others. The dude was from Florida, not sure who he was, but obviously he had some stick. It became apparent that we were racing for second. Nearing the end, with nothing else able to get anywhere, I conferenced with the Cronoman. He said he wanted to attack at two laps to go. I told him I had shitty legs and that was fine with me.

I sat at the back a bit, but then coming up on four two go, I'm moving up on the backstretch and the field suddenly slows and bunches to the right. My instincts took over and I dove inside and cranked it up hard into the last turn, and kept the power on all the way past the finish line. When I rounded the turn and headed onto the slightly downhill long straightaway, I found a good rhythm. I knew I could go for two laps at this pace, and after that the Cronoman would be perfectly setup to launch a counter. This idea was working well, except that my gap grew pretty large after a lap. After two laps, the margin was still sizable, but Matt Domnarski (Benidorm) was bridging across and pretty close behind. Hagen was encouraging me from the sidelines, as was Kerry. I kept my head down and pedaled. Matt got really close, and I even thought about waiting for him, but I could not tell how far back the field was, so I figured make him work for it. Bell lap. Hagen is still sounding like he thinks I can make it. Man was I in the hurt box. Stayed low, in the 14, dieing a thousand deaths. Last turn, still clear, go to the 13, here they come, but I'm close enough to home and I sprint across in second, just a bit ahead of Norton, who outsprints the group for third. I guess they swarmed by Matt on the last lap. The Cronoman did a fine job policing the chase and came across in 10th. It was a small field but I'll take it, and I get to update the sidebar.

I had five minutes to get my number switched and start the 30+ race. This one had a bigger field, maybe over 40 riders. KL also opted to enter this one to get a workout and warmup for the womens' race. Well, in contrast to the 40+, this race started like most races end. The field immediately went single file, 30 mph right from the gun. I was not recovered and just did the old "put your head down and wait for it to stop" routine. Well, after two laps, it did, and things bunched up. Sadly, not for long. The hostilities returned a half a lap later and I was gone, popped off, done like dinner. I rolled off the course and went over to the paymaster to collect my winnings from the 40+. The Cronoman and KL hung in for the entire race, although eventually the field split into four groups, and neither made the front pack. I hung out and took some pictures, both artsy stuff of the architecture, and of the womens' race. I even got one of MegA on her foray to the front, but autofocus on my low-end camera let me down. I know Meg, I should have got a better one... I'll post them later in the week when I've got no time to write.

On to Sunday. My knee is so so. I got some glucosamine stuff from Rite-Aid and I'm trying that. KL wanted to do a long ride, and I could use the miles, but it was really hot on Sunday. We rolled out thinking of maybe doing six hours or so, but we went slow. I took us on a southerly track, and eventually started thinking we might be able to escape the heat if we rode down to the ocean. The only problem was, I really didn't have a route or a beach in mind that I knew to be friendly and accessible by bike. We were in Rehoboth down by the TT course by this point, so a decision was made to forge on to the land of Gewilli and his intrepid East Bay compatriot Il Bruce.

To be continued... Thanks for reading.