Plymouth, MA

Adam Sullivan

The Myles Standish State Park in Plymouth, Massachusetts is a maze of small roads. They snake up and down and around ponds and trees, and once you enter, you are instantly lost. Home to the Charge Pond Training Series, its roads have also hosted the erstwhile Adelphia Grand Prix (now the Myles Standish State Park Road Race - Presented by the Town of Plymouth Services Board) for dozens of years.

The race flyer describes the course thusly: “The roads are not perfect, but good for racing.” After multiple equipment woes at yesterday’s Tour of the Battenkill, this rendered us all wary yet excited, like smokers who read the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes and light up anyway.

We lined up Adam Sullivan, Jason Baer, Jason Beerman, Eric Tremble, and Colin Murphy under sunny skies and perfect spring conditions. With relatively large numbers in the race, we wanted to always have guys up the road until something stuck so we took turns out of the parking lot. Eric went and was followed by Colin and Adam and Jason Baer and Jason Beerman. The latter Jason’s move seemed to come at the right time since he hit a winding section and was quickly out of sight. After a few miles, he was joined by evergreen legbreaker Mark McCormack, Rite Aid’s Robbie King, NEBC’s Todd Rowell, and Sakonnet’s Danny Estevez. The five rolled a very hard pace for three of the ten 5.1 mile laps to establish the gap and then kept the tempo high with even pulls. With four laps to go on the the 500-meter eight percent hill, the pace lifted and Estevez was dropped. The lead four continued at a steady pace until the final lap, when Beerman tried to get away from the two excellent sprinters (King and McCormack) in the group. The attack dropped Rowell, but King and McCormack came back and the three trackstanded and surged, trackstanded and surged, until the finish line was in sight and it became a drag race. Beerman ended up in the 3rd spot again.

Behind, the team patrolled all the dangerous chase groups, and Eric and Adam were in the first group back. Unfortunately, Eric flatted with 3 laps to go, but Adam rode strongly in the group for an 8th place finish. It was a day of redemption, of sorts. The team will race the Sturbridge/Palmer double next weekend.

Myles Standish results are here.