Spooky / NCC / Kenda Cycling Team

This past weekend brought a similar pair of races to last week’s, with much more satisfying results all around. Saturday was Purdy and Nathaniel’s home race, the Capital Region Road Race just outside of Albany, NY, put on by CBRC, and Sunday was the Fall River Crit in Fall River, MA–the godfather of New England industrial park criteriums. With GMSR just three weeks away and some unusual late season holes in the racing calendar, this was to be our last race weekend as a team before GMSR and Univest, and we all really wanted to make a meal of it.

The Capital Region race drew a larger field this year than last, which was nice to see, and 45 riders toed the line. Purdy, Nathaniel, Mainer, Tremble and Adam made up our squad for the day, and apart from us the field looked pretty much identical to last week’s from Tokeneke, with Roger Aspholm (Westwood), Aidan Charles (CCNS), Peter Hurst (Rapha) and the duo of Jamey Driscoll and Alister Ratcliffe (Bikereg/Cannondale) looking to be the guys we would be challenging for the win.

Tremble had the bit between his teeth by the time breakfast was over, and Purdy is always motivated to race hard on his home hills, so the plan was for those two to do what they’ve done on separate teams for the last two years in this race: get into the early break, roll it and make it stick. The course is pretty unforgiving and the heat this year was absolutely awful, so an effective chase seemed near impossible if a group was able to establish a solid gap. Mainer, Adam and Nathaniel would race late, follow any favorites who didn’t make the move, and try to frustrate any chase attempts.

And that is more or less what happened. Tremble attacked the minute we passed the finish line and the flag dropped signaling the end of the neutral start, and he immediately rolled out of sight. Over the next ten miles various attempts to bridge to him raised the pace a little and he was eventually reeled in between the course’s two short, but nastily steep climbs. Purdy countered soon after on some rollers on route 143 near the reservoir, he was chased down, and then a Mengoni rider and Westwood’s Todd Cassan slipped away. They gained a reasonable gap and Tremble tried to bridge. Purdy jumped after him, picked him up, and they were gone, a break of four now established. Two more chase groups went soon after, one containing Adam, and one containing CCNS’s Aidan Charles and Ron Larose. The latter two eventually made it across, some guys went forward and some went backward, and the more or less final break was established with two of our guys, the two from CCNS and the Mengoni rider. Perfect. And only 100k left to race.

Despite the heat and the distance, little changed at the front, while much changed at the back. Nathaniel suffered another jour sans and pulled the plug halfway through the 3rd lap, making full use of home court advantage to take a sweet downhill shortcut back to the feed zone. (Hey, it happens.) Mainer, however, rode strong up front and kept both Driscoll and Aspholm on short leashes. Adam paid somewhat for his hard racing early on and had settled into the 3rd group on the road, already several minutes down, when the officials pulled and placed the back half of the field. While this was frustrating for some riders who wanted to ride the last lap to officially finish, it was the right call. What was left of the “field” was over 10 minutes behind the front two groups that were still racing, and the course marshals (including Nathaniel’s dad, George) were suffering mightily, but hardily in the heat.

In the end, Aidan was a bit too strong for our guys and managed to pull away from Purdy and Tremble for the win. Our two troopers rolled in with Purdy 2nd and Tremble 3rd, a good distance ahead of the next two riders. Mainer barely lost contact with Driscoll on the last lap but dug deep enough to out-distance Aspholm at the finish, giving him 6th place on the day and a fine ride. Many thanks to Paul McDonell and CBRC for putting up a solid prize purse, and having a superb core of volunteers on hand to make the race happen. The corners were swept squeaky clean, they handed up neutral water, and registration was well organized. This crew puts on a good race.

Sunday:

Al Donahue after a fine solo win in front of Justin Spinelli and Mark McCormack. A classic, all-New-England podium, for sure.

That picture is certainly worth 1000 words, but it seems a shame not to tell a good story.

Al, Mukunda, Nathaniel, Adam and Ward descended on the Fall River industrial park in Fall River, MA on Sunday, braving the 95+ degree heat for the sake of some classic, New England criterium racing. The course was run counter-clockwise this year (left turns) and offered a stiff headwind on the finish straight, a tailwind on the back stretch, and a long, 250 meter uphill drag at a grade of about 6% leading into the final turn. Given the heat, the hill and the field of just more than 30 riders, a breakaway seemed a foregone conclusion. The only question was how many of us would be in it, and whether or not Maahk The Shaak would be there, too.

The race got aggressive early with IF sending off first Jerome Townsend and then Robbie King in search of primes and attempting to establish a workable break in the process. When everything came back together Al launched a big attack that set things rolling and within a lap or two the break was established. Ward and Nathaniel had made it across, as well as McCormack and his teammate, Tobi Schultze; Alain Ferry, Justin Spinelli and a couple of others were there as well, plus Al, of course, who had started the fireworks. Robbie King had managed to get the jump on everybody and was cruising about 20 seconds in front of the break for a few laps, but when that ended nobody seemed keen to counterattack. Ward and Nathaniel did much of the work to keep the move rolling and Spinelli, King and Ferry were really active as well. There were many passengers in the break, though, including McCormack who didn’t show his nose at the front until it was time to sprint. Fair enough I suppose with three of us in the move, and he and a couple of the other 35+ guys had already raced once in the heat.

Following a flurry of attacks, counterattacks and primes, Al rolled off with 5 laps to go when they announced two final consecutive $50 primes. He took the first one with a small gap over Spinelli, and stayed gone for the second one as well. This left him off the front, alone with 4 laps to go and in possession of a rapidly growing gap already over 20 seconds. For the last few laps he scratched out a few more seconds on Spinelli, also solo, and they both put time into the rest of the break. Al took the win solo with plenty of time to smile about it, and Ward and Nathaniel did their best, but couldn’t quite get by McCormack for 3rd, and so ended up 4th and 5th, respectively. There was a tiny bit of excitement when Nathaniel hit a pothole about 100 meters out in full sprint which resulted in his tire making a dramatic pssshhhhh!! sound as he crossed the line, but no harm done. While all this was going on Mukunda and Adam covered anything and everything that tried to get away or go across to the break with Adam eventually slipping his companions and coming in alone for 10th place.

After the race we counted a big pile of money, ate unspeakable amounts of Peruvian food, and laughed all the way home. Plus Adam sat down in the giant, bathtub sized cooler full of ice at the finish line. 2 races, 2 days, 1 win, and a total of 7 riders in the top 10 for the weekend. Now that’s Spooky!

The weekend of August 8th and 9th offered a brace of New England classics at opposite ends of the racing spectrum. The Gate City Cyclone in Nashua, NH is a great, new-old race recently revived after some years layoff, and features smooth turns, chicanes, a small stinger of a hill, and solid prize money. The Tokeneke Road Race in North Central Connecticut offers hills, hills and more hills on a beautiful and hard rolling course encircling the Barkhamstead reservoir. Spooky/NCC/Kenda fielded decent squads to both races, and had mixed results. But apparently we were just getting warmed up…

We raced Saturday’s crit aggressively with all of us–Al, Ward, Greenfield, Nathaniel, Tremble, Mainer and Durrian and Brad of the devo squad–taking turns trying to establish a workable break. Ward spent considerable time off the front and managed to win a couple of primes, Nathaniel got caught in a crash and had to finish on an ill-fitting spare bike, and the super strong Canadian VW/Specialized team, fresh off their win at Montreal-Quebec, wasn’t keen to let anyone go. With about 5 laps to go, Brad got into a convincing looking move with a VW rider, but it didn’t last on the fast course. Then at 3 to go Al launched what looked to be the winning attack, but some confusion with the lap cards ended that, and a disorganized finish ensued. With both of our sprinters at half speed, (Ward still trying to heal his Achilles and Nathaniel recovering from food poisoning and his crash), the team kept attacking, but got nothing for it. In the end Ward managed a top-10 sitting in the saddle, not yet daring to stand up and sprint, and Greenfield rolled in just behind, but also in the money.

On Sunday afternoon, Al, Purdy, Mainer, Tremble and Nathaniel all toed the line at Tokeneke under a darkening sky. The field was larger than avergae for this race with 65 or so guys lining up including a raging Roger Aspholm, Jake Hollenbach (Empire) and Jamey Driscoll (Bikereg). Various things happened on the first lap including Eric blowing up his rear wheel and Nathaniel discovering he wasn’t yet recovered from his bout with Salmonella. While those two manned battle stations in the grupetto, Al was displaying his rapidly improving late-season form and made it into the break with Aspholm, Driscoll, Peter Hurst, Aidan Charles et al. In the end Al finished a strong 5th just behind the sprint for the win, handily won by the ageless Mr. Aspholm, and Mainer kicked on the afterburners to take about a minute out of the chase group, passing several riders in the last 200 meters to take 10th.

Getting better…