Southbury, CT
Eric Tremble reports:
It was another New England Classic this weekend: The Housatonic Hills Road Race in Southbury, CT. The 81 mile race features three circuits of an undulating 27 mile loop. It always seems to be hot and humid in central Connecticut in mid June, and the difficult terrain turns the race into a real test of survival. A welcome change for 2008 was the removal of an especially rough section of road along the Housatonic River. As a result, the 1 mile climb up Constitution Hill, which had previously only been used as a finishing climb, was now part of every lap and the finish was at the bottom of the hill. This completely changed the dynamic of the race, and made for some exciting sprint finishes (albeit slow motion tired climber sprint finishes).
There was a pretty strong field in attendance and after noting some of the more dangerous riders, we decided on a race plan. With only 5 riders in attendance (Adam, Colin, Jason Baer, Toby, and myself), we couldn’t cover every break so we would take it easy early, race hard on the second lap, and try to be ahead of the big guns (Justin Spinelli, Dan Vaillancourt, Todd Wells, etc.) when they attacked to break the race apart. With a few exceptions, Toby’s broken chain and Colin’s post crash lack of racing top end, the plan worked to perfection. After two laps, the ever aggressive Jason Baer was in a move around 30 seconds ahead of a slightly depleted peloton and about two minutes behind a fading 3 man break. Vaillancourt then drove the pace through the feedzone and up the climb at the start of the 3rd lap and shattered the field as we were all busy getting bottles. I found myself in a group with Jake Hollenbach and Will Dugan (CCB), Justin Lindine and Lee Rosenthal (Targetraining), and a few others that I can’t remember. Jason had latched onto Dan’s group as they came by, and my group was going full out to get up to what was obviously the winning move. We rolled through smoothly for a while and finally made contact just before the second set of climbs.
From there it was attack, counter attack, and survival. We caught the last of the break, Charles McCarthy (Metlife), with about 10 miles to race. Soon after that, Jason Baer lost contact and rode in with Charles. Of the remaining 15 riders, Targetraining had the best numbers so it was not surprising that Justin Lindine got away with 5 miles to go and rode home solo for the win. After Jamey Driscoll (Fiordifrutta) rolled away on the descent, we were left to sprint for 3rd. It was a fun little sprint with two turns in the last 400 meters, and I gave it everything I had to finish a respectable 5th. A few minutes later, Jason rolled in with Charlie to take 17th just ahead of the remainder of the field. Adam rounded out the Kenda/Raleigh finishers in 37th.
Complete results are here.