2015 Tour of the Battenkill

[pcollins]

I decided to drive up day of with my dad instead of staying in a hotel to save some cash. We left at around 6AM, only 4 hours after I finally fell asleep. I stuffed my body with tons food and fluids between Friday and Saturday morning.
The Cat 3 field was the biggest field of the whole race, around 120 racers I think and a good MRC team: Raguin, Cratty, Pare, Batten and I. Meetinghouse was a minefield of potholes, rocks and dropped bottles and Cratty was an unfortunate victim (flat). The pace on the hills (especially the first few) was very hard. A winning breakaway of 4 got away including a sandbagging pro (yes… a professional cyclist) from Costa Rica, who went on to win solo. USAC should have a sandbagger reporting hotline. The field size was reducing after every hill, for MRC, it was just Pare and I from Stages Rd to the finish. Pare did a ton of work on the front of the chasing group, probably too much. He was suffering on Riddle Rd and he was dropped momentarily but he regained contact on the downhill. The group was down to 15-20 riders for a while but another group caught us and the chase was back up to around 40 riders. There was time to recover before the last short dirt hill Old Schuylerville Rd. I latched on to what I thought was a good wheel to follow on the last hill: Mark Miller, but at about 1k until the hill when the pace picked up, he didn’t have the legs and I waited too long to pass him and lost 20+ positions. At the bottom of the hill I passed a bunch of people and made it back to Pare and passed him. Nearing the top, Pare, in the process of passing me, let out a weird high pitched grunt, it was obvious he was really hurting but he was hammering. He was on another rider’s wheel until about 200m to go where he lead me out for a “sprint”. I passed Pare but another guy passed me at the line for 10th, I got 11th, Pare 13th. We finished just under 3 hours. I got off my bike and collapsed into the grass; the last couple minutes of the race was extremely painful.
For food/fluids I ate two caffeinated gels, a clif bar, and drank one bottle of Gatorade and 1.5 bottles of water.
Oh yeah, and I was the first rider from the chase group to go through the covered bridge which probably made for a good photo
Cat 3 11th/120-ish

[jraguin]

Patrick and Pare did a great job in our field which was as usual for this race, stacked. Unfortunately, both Jeremy and Rich were bitten by flats only 10 miles of the race. My race was in the middle but honestly, I am happy with how I competed and feel I did almost everything I could have. My normal downfall of this race and most races is being to far back in the pack when the pace gets hard, and maybe I could have done slightly better here, but I did decently well on that score. It was just the pace was beyond my fitness at the moment.

My story jumps to Meetinghouse Rd. I was in a good position going into Meetinghouse, but the pace was very hard. To give you a sense of how hard, when I uploaded Strava last night, I was 13th of 1600+ up the first paved section of Meetinghouse. I let myself drift a bit back on the first dirt part of Meetinghouse, which left me chasing a bit on the camel downhill (in time to see Jeremy pulling off with the flat ). I pushed up the next part of Meetinghouse and realized I was in no mans land as about 40+ guys were in front of me and the rest of the field was behind. No one came through so I burned more matches pedaling hard for probably 1/2 mile, realized I wasn't going to cross the gap, sat up, and waited for people to catch. A group came by and I jumped on. We pacelined and caught back to the lead pack "only" about 3 miles later. I had some recovery (~2 miles) before Stage Rd and thought it might be enough. I tried to move up before the start of Stage but the paved road is narrow and the moto rightfully enforcing the yellow line rule vigorously. Stage was just too hard. I couldn't hold the pace of the front group. Although I wasn't really getting passed, gaps were growing between riders. I crossed the top and the only one close enough was a Greenline Velo guy (Smith Anderson). We caught a guy as we started descending and Smith said to me: "It is going to be long day" as we are 20 miles into a 68 mile race. I said lets start doing quick pulls on a rotating paceline and see what happens. We started doing that, soon our group ballooned to 8 or 9 as we caught a couple of guys and other guys caught us. That story repeated as we eventually got our group to about 20 guys. We were moving along fairly well but knew the front guys were long gone. The rest of the way we would drop a guy or two on the hills and occasionally pick up a guy. We passed a lot of guys but unfortunately mostly from the 50+ field (my 2nd/3rd? pack in our field was almost 4 min faster than the entire Masters 50+ winner). Our pack did battle a bit up the final dirt Old Schuylerville hill. I was pretty spent and ended up 6th of our pack of 19 for all of 50th overall in the Cat 3 field. Can't say I was happy with 50th overall, but I am happy with the way I raced.

John

[cbusick]

Nice job Patrick.
I raced the Cat 4 40+ with Bill and a number of other career Cat 40 40+ guys.
I felt like I was in good shape, but after a spring of getting killed by my Cat 3 teammates on training rides, and no racing due to the snow I had no idea how my fitness would stack up
against the other sandbaggers in my category. Meetinghouse began with with screams of "hole!", water bottles everywhere, and the usual game of dropped chain slalom. Soon I was in a group of 10 off the front. We put in a little more time on the descent, but when we turned into the wind the pace eased up and the group quickly grew. Stage road went the same way, hard tempo, no real attacks things gradually regrouping afterwards.

People kept trying to organize a rotation, but we weren't really chasing anything so there wasn't much point.

Around mile 50 Bill pulled up along side me and said if I didn't need anything else from him he'd be leaving me now.

Then we turned onto Joe Bean.
Mike Kuehn just rode off the front on the flat before it even went up. One of the Quebecker's said, "If we don't close that gap now he'll be gone."
I picked up the pace a bit, and it was just me and a Down Cycles guy chasing him up the hill. The DC guy could stay with me, but couldn't help me close the gap.
I thought about trying to jump to him, but that would mean I would be in a 2 man break for 18 miles into the wind. It didn't seem likely to succeed.

BTW if you want to see a real sandbagger, check out Mike http://www.road-results.com/racer/28796 Cat 4 since 2011, 83 races as a Cat4, more than 20 points...

After the climb DC and I chased Mike, but it was all DC could do to hold my wheel going downhill, and when I made him pull going up we lost more time to Mike.
There was a group of 6 or so that nearly caught us before the start of Riddle, but once it started to go up the gap to them opened. A Weston Posse guy on a Seven bridged across to us,
but he did more harm than good, riding off the front when it was his turn to pull and then practically sitting up and having us run him over when he was done.
DC and I lectured him on smoothness, but it was useless. After the hill three guys managed to catch up to us. Two were teammates from BP Racing which had me a little worried but they didn't play any
games. The third was a little frenchie who asked lots of questions and was playing games with skipping an occasional turn. We did get a decent rotation going into the head/cross wind, and I was sure that the 6 of us would chase Mike down. Time checks had him around 1:00 out, and at one point I could see the pace car.

A couple of the guys had nice 2 wheel slides on the turn onto the road that runs along the Hudson. I can't believe they didn't sweep the gravel out of that turn before the race. It was an obvious hazard during our recon Friday Night.

Another group of 4 caught us. I was glad to see Shawnee from OP made it back up, although I knew that as nice a guy as he is, if it came to a sprint he'd probably get it, even if he thought he was leading me out. The other guys in Shawnee's group were the Bike Barn sandbaggers that I'd raced with last year in this category.

We turned onto Old Schuylerville Road and the Weston Posse guy pulled off the front. I closed the gap and road steady with him, waiting to see who would try and come around. Just like on Riddle Hill Weston Posse would go hard for 20 seconds and then look blown and I'd pass him. Then he'd recover and come by again. It was hard to figure out just how strong he really was. I looked back and we had a 20' gap so he was really the only guy to worry about. On the recon Friday I planned to go at the driveway after the switchback if I had a chance of getting away. It worked great I punched it, and then kept shifting up as the hill got less steep. Now it was just a 1 mile TT to the finish. I saw bright orange shoes ahead of me and although a little bummed to see that Jeremy was off the back of the Cat 3 race, chasing him down gave me good motivation to hold the pace high. The moto official told me 20 seconds, but I couldn't see Mike ahead. Then he started beeping at Jeremy to get out of they way.
I'm not sure that was necessary, but he was an enthusiastic official.

I passed Jeremy and kept going. Looking back under my arm I could only see the orange shoes so I knew Weston Posse wasn't closing in on me.
I was able to take the sketchy last turn onto the finish without taking risks and roll through for 2nd.

[JeremyC]

83 races as a cat 4? I think I did 10. Maybe I can downgrade. Or we need a Cat 3 43+

[pace21]

Firstly, well done Patrick. You raced a super smart (and strong) race. Oh, and if the cycling thing doesn't work out you have a career as a poker player -- I could never tell whether you were hurting or not, the most comfortable pain face in the club haha.

For me this was my first RR since mid 2013, with only a Ninigret since then so I really wasn't sure how it would go because let's face it: Ninigret is Ninigret and Battenkill is Battenkill. There were 2 guys in my mind to mark during the race, Mark Miller and Sean Pantellere. Both have great results in the past and seemed ready to go for this race.

The race was nothing much until the left turn onto Meetinghouse Hill when all hell broke loose. SP and MM both attacked together, I bridged and caught, this was all on the paved section. I led us on to the dirt and was happy to do so considering the amount of holes and soft spots. It settled momentarily and then when it got steep I started getting swarmed and passed and was already maxed out so started thinking it would be a LONG day. Clearly there were more than those 2 guys to look out for in this field. We rounded the right turn at the top of Meetinghouse and I looked back -- it was strung out as far as I could see but there was a sizeable gap about 50-60 riders back. Wow, attrition. Half the field gone on the first climb. OK, that was fast, PR for me on the segment.

Rolling over to Stage Rd nothing exciting, some conversation even. There was a mini attack by Costa Rican Pro Guy but it was quickly shut down. Of course we didn't know it at the time that he was a pro, but someone yelled "don't let that guy go he's a massive sandbagger" and of course that's all it takes for a pack of rabid cat 3's to get the bit between their teeth and line it out. That was the only time we'd catch him all day. On the descent to the base of Stage Rd MM and SP exchanged words and then attacked in a coordinated way, as if predetermined? I briefly thought about going with them and for sure would have if it were say 20 or 30 miles later but with almost 50 miles to go it seemed a little unwise. We turned on Stage, I went hard but not all out at the bottom, but then starting getting passed in droves. I didn't really have much more so I just starting following the wheel in front of me (10th or so) and praying. In short order MM rapidly came back to us and started going backward, followed quickly by Costa Rican Pro Guy launching off the front to bridge to SP who was 10 seconds up the road from our little group. Somewhere in the fog 2 other guys bridged up also, although all I was focused on at this point was the rear wheel in front of me. We crested Stage and on the descent/flats I started chasing and organizing a chase. I summoned my inner Smudger – yelled a little, made circular hand motions (“spell about!”), instructed which direction to peel off the front, yelled more at guys letting gaps open in the advancing paceline, etc. It generally worked and we chased for the entire section of the numbered road heading from Cambridge to the covered bridge. The gap was about a minute at this point. Patrick is very right, I did WAY too much work on this section, but it was intentional, I knew the podium was up the road and at that point I decided I’d rather flame out trying to catch them instead of racing for 5th place. Side note: having the moto officials was great since they kept coming back and giving us the time splits, however they were annoyingly giving us misinformation. They repeatedly told us there were 3 guys in a break (there were actually 4) and they would provide us a single time gap. This implied the break was together and at that time gap but in reality CRPG was up the road and they were giving us the gap to him (which was growing) and not to the other guys (which was shrinking). So all we heard was the gap growing, growing, growing so we lost our motivation to chase but in reality the minor places were only 30-60 seconds ahead. BTW kudos to those guys for holding us off the whole way.

The rest of the race was basically drill the climbs, roll the flats until the finish climb wear it hit the fan again. Patrick’s recount was spot on. I rolled our group on to the climb, set a hard but manageable pace and predictably started getting passed (whaddya mean guys, we’re not gonna do this 2 minute climb at 400 watts?). About 10 guys got by (including Patrick) before I slotted in, and then on the steep little pitch at the top I upshifted, stood on the pedals, and gave it one last effort. I passed Patrick, uttered my high pitched animal sound (which in my head was “c’mon Patrick, go, go, go!” clear as day) and starting closing a 10 meter gap to the next guy in line. Once the gap was closed and I was “recovered” on his wheel there was another 15 meter gap in front of him to a group of about 6-8 guys. I looked at PC, said “let’s go” (in English this time, I think), and drilled it in a futile attempt to bridge us up to the next group. The effort was somewhat useful though as we passed some expiring riders before the turn, and with a head of steam we railed the sketchy corner into the fairgrounds, I put in 5 or 10 more angry pedal strokes and that was that. We hadn’t discussed it ahead of time but there was a wicked crosswind on the short finish sprint. I left a little gap on the leeward side and PC wisely went on that side instead of the wider (windward) side. Cagey. I really thought (and hoped) he got 10th since at this point I STILL thought it was a 3 man break but alas it was 4 guys up the road, so PC 11th, CP 13th. Great race with some really unfortunate bad luck for a few of us but at least everyone kept it rubber side down.

By the numbers, this year was longer and WAY faster than any previous edition of Bkill that I've done. 23mph flat, (previous high 21.7mph) and I PR'ed EVERY segment this year, including Joe Bean even though it came much later in the race and AFTER Meetinghouse and Stage this year. Wow that race hurt, but in a very satisfying way.

[PJ McQuade]

Great reports, and impressive efforts. Sounds like it was brutally hard. Was this year's course better than the classic Battenkill? I didn't prereg because my wife's due date was so close to race day, and it's a good thing because my daughter was born yesterday afternoon!

[ahamilton]

Great reports, and impressive efforts. Sounds like it was brutally hard. Was this year's course better than the classic Battenkill? I didn't prereg because my wife's due date was so close to race day, and it's a good thing because my daughter was born yesterday afternoon!

Congratulations PJ!!!

And congratulations to the whole MRC team.

[Jacob]

PJ for the win! Congrats!

Everyone else, good effort and better luck next time!

[Mkidd3]

Congrats PJ!
Very well done everyone! MRC crushed it!

[mfwestbe]

Congrats PJ!

And congrats to everyone in MRC

Men Cat 4C - Not much to say here except I lined up late at the very back with not much opportunity to move up before... what's that? Major pileup at mile 4.5 just after the turn on 40. I couldn't believe it, but went off road to the right and around shrubs etc. By the time I was on the road again it was headwinds and a few guys behind me. Not enough firepower to really get back to the peloton. Did have at one point 15-20 guys but organization was haphazard and not consistent.
But, goals were for the day: 1. keep rubber side down, 2. if it starts to hurt, HTFU, but 3. don't blow up. I succeeded at all of this, worked with a couple good guys from CRCA and Kissena for some 60 miles, and was still a tough ride. Rolled in 40 of 86 finishers (15 DNF...) so this is still an improvement from Hilltowns last year.

[Fintan]

I rode the Cat 5 55+. Race got off to a slow start, the speed did not pick up much after the starting rollout. I heard the motorbike guy shouting "The race has started" and " I don't mind riding this slow", nobody reacted. I had picked my spot at the head of the group and stayed in the front ten for the whole race. I had my eye in the guy I expected to win (previous podiums in a younger group). We meandered up to meeting house road for my first real test, could I stay with the lead group? I was pleasantly surprised that I could. One climber broke away but we collected him on the descent. We got a paceline going as we headed to Stage Road. I did a strong pull and when I went to hand over there was nobody there, they were 50+ yards back. I decided that rather than sit up and wait I would press on to Stage road and make a more leisurely ascent. I crested Stages in third position. The group recombined on the descent and we had about ten guys. Threw my first bottle at the feed zone and was first through the covered bridge. The race between the first and second feed zones was uneventful, the group would stretch a little on the tough climbs and recombine on the descent. I threw my second bottle at the second feed zone and was happy to grab a bottle of water.
We headed into Joe Bean Climb as a group but my chosen winner and a good climber gradually made a gap to the rest of the group. I was at the front of the trailing group and when we crested I gave chase on the descent. I pulled hard with a rider in tow. When I moved for him to pull through he said he had nothing, so I pressed on as hard as I could.
The two of us entered the Riddle climb together, but I managed to drop him on the climb. I headed down the descent as hard as I could, I reckoned if I could catch the front two I would be in with a good chance of a podium position. I pressed on as hard as I could, passing riders from earlier races. I was surprised when I came up on a rider with a J bib, it was the climber. He looked surprised to see me and congratulated me on catching him. I pressed on and dropped him. The area with the open fields was brutal, the wind had really picked up from earlier. I was on my own and had visions of a paceline bearing down on me. I had a look back as I headed into the final climb and saw nobody. I ascended the final climb without issue and got encouragement from riders I passed from earlier races with comments like "good going J". I finished alone 2:17 behind the winner.

[Winslow]

Mens Cat5A: First race ever=first race report ever. Sitting on the line of the start Brad and I inched our ways up until row 2 and 3 of the start and the HR began to increase without any work put in yet. A few comments were made by the announcers until one important piece of information was shared with us, "wheels in wheels out, there are no neutral wheels". This announcement did not become important to me until a much later time... The race began with me feeling my way out in the field, Brad and I working into our planned position, near the front up meeting house road climb. Perfectly executed, started about 5 wheels back, and finished 1st! Continuing down the dirt I continued to have a feeling of nervousness, when is this going to blow up?! At some point around here the winner made a small move off the front. I kept asking around, "should we follow? ", everyones response was, "no he will never last", so I sat in and did my bit of the work, at a surprisingly easy pace. Brad and I continued to work well together, communicating about position and making the moves we wanted. Coming through the covered bridge I again managed to set the pace to follow up the next climb up Roberson Rd. In the following section I ended up doing way too much work, no one wanted to pull and I somehow ended up front for 2, almost simultaneous pulls. I now began to focus on resting my legs for the Juniper Swamp climb about 7 wheels back. Man did that come fast, and yet again Brad and I were right where we wanted to be, again I was first up the climb when someone decided to push the pace a bit for once so the pack followed on the descent. Spacing out a decent amount on the descent I heard a loud "clink" expecting a flat to follow, but nothing happened and I kept right on pushing down the dirt road. People began talking about how we should start to chase the lead guy down, but still noone wanted to work together. When we hit mile 38 I heard the dreaded hiss while taking a pull, yelling FLAT I pulled off immediately. I now understood the importance of the wheels in wheels out announcement, I was going to have to change my flat and fast. Fumbling a bit, I managed a 5-7 minute front wheel change and quickly hopped back on the bike in TT mode, knowing it was probably impossible to bridge this gap I said to myself work as hard as you can. Along the remainder of the race I managed to catch up to one member of the 5A group on a fast descent, working with him and one other random cat 4 guy to push as hard as we could. I thought I may die on the Joe Bean climb, but kept pushing. At the top of the Riddle road climb I said to my fellow 5A racer, we just need to keep on working together to make up as much time as we can, I never saw him after I slowly pulled away during a soft pull. The one cat4 guy was still sticking on and we worked together through the windy sections with some quick rotations on the front with one other 5A racer we came upon and quickly dropped and one other cat 4 guy who tagged on. at mile 66 where Brad and I had decided to make a move towards the final climb I turned it up with all I had, and quickly dropped everyone immediately. Once to the top with no real motivation for a full out sprint with no one around me, I worked as hard as I could. I pulled across the finish line at 3:18:20, just 8 min after the lead guy and 7 min after Brad! Overall I was happy with my efforts, and super syked that Brad reached the podium!

[cbusick]

5-7 minute flat change was probably faster than a lot of wheel changes people got yesterday.

[BTurner]

Great result PJ!!! My race report is like my last 7 Battenkills. Got dropped on Joe Bean.

[Smudger]

PJ..best race report ever. Congrats.

Great racing everyone

[Bradford]

PJ - congrats on the new baby - that's wonderful news.

Men's 5A race:
For anyone who has spoken with me over the past month, you know I've had a lot of anxiety/excitement about Battenkill - thank you all for the advice and putting up with the endless questions. Once 10:55 am rolled around, I was definitely ready to ride.

As Winslow mentioned, we were hoping to get to the hills on the front, and drift back as we climbed, working at our own pace. This wasn't too much of a problem. Having all of the key segments marked on the stem certainly helped prepare.

The eventual race winner slipped away shortly after meeting house road. He was visible in sight, for many early miles, but there was no interest in working together to go and pull him back in. In hindsight - this was a mistake. I'm not sure when he left us, but without a moto providing any updates for our race, we didn't have any idea what the gap was. At the finish, it was less than 1:30 - so this would have been nice to know, and perhaps would have helped motivate the chase.

In any case - as many mentioned, this was a race of attrition. Our field of 55 or 60 would shed 5 or so riders on each climb. It was a bit frustrating to see everyone hammer on the climb, only to immediately sit up at the top and wait for everyone to rejoin. I didn't think that we were riding particularly fast, spending lots of time as a group at 18 - 20 mph.

After Winslow's flat around mile 35 or so, I began working with a strong rider from bikerman. He would go off the front from time to time on his own, and I would bridge up. We would rotate a few times before deciding that the two of us were unlikely to stay away with the wind. I also found myself acting as peleton 'whip' a number of times - calling out people for sitting in and not making any contributions to the workload. At one point after taking a particularly long pull on the front I shouted 'there are still 10 miles left - you're going to have to do some work! you have to do something!' When others came through, gaps would open up off the front shortly afterwards - this was also frustrating because again, we weren't going very fast.

We reached the last climb with 13 riders at the bottom. I grabbed one of the stronger climbers wheel, but we were gapped by two other guys who had literally sat in all day - did zero work. Once we got to the top, the wheel I was on had nothing left - so I was left with maybe 100 m gap on the other two guys up the road for the last mile. I put my head down and went hard, catching them right before the right hand turn into the finish. I came around one guy and missed the other by a second, finishing in 3rd place - ran out of time and space.

I felt strong coming in to Battenkill and really appreciated having Winslow in the mix for half of the race to work with. I was also the benefactor of knowledge and advice from everyone at MRC - I think this made a huge difference for me.

It's been so much fun getting into bike racing - With Battenkill behind me, I'm happy to close the book on cat 5 and move forward next weekend at Quabbin in the 4s. See you there.