Minuteman Road Club

The road race season is not over. At least not until this afternoon. Despite a lack of training and not racing since June except for a hillclimb TT in August, I made my way down to Jamestown, RI for the road season swan song. As it was been the past 3 years, the weather was great and the 45 Masters field was packed. The race is 2 laps around a 19-mile course with hills, wind and some awful patches of road. The course layout makes for exciting action at the end of the race. The last mile has the steepest, longest climb of the course, a 50 meter flat after the climb leading to a hard left turn and 300 meters of utter misery to the finish line along the water and in front of a well-lubed, bloody-mary crowd.
The race was fast and intense with a couple of very solid breaks on both laps featuring Jim Nash, Hand Pfeifle, Ron Bourgoin and a bunch of grinders from OY, Sunapee, Cyclnauts (Pare's buddy Mike Norton was throwing elbows) and Arc-en-ciel. I joined the chase group on the first lap and helped reel in a 6-man break just before the start of the 2nd lap but sat in the whole 2nd lap recalling last year's nightmare when I was involved in several chase attempts only to have nothing left for the last 5 miles when the break was caught. This proved a more effective strategy, although I was not alone sitting in, and with 5 miles to go I moved up to the top 20 with a group of about 35 or so chasing 4 guys toward the final hill. At the base of the climb the lead group was only 20 meters ahead and catchable. The climb provided us with all we needed to catch the leaders and at the top of the climb 15 of us joined the lead group and the sprint to the corner was on. We made the turn and the group of 20 was not going to be caught. I grabbed the wheel of a Sunapee rider with maybe 8 or 10 guys in front of us but a couple of the breakaway guys in front were dying. With 50 meters to go there was nothing but pain and positioning and I managed to sprint past a few guys and snagged 4th and in the money.
I didn't expect anything close to this outcome given my lousy season and inconsistent training. Beating Nash who won Battenkill and Blue Hills, and a couple of other 45+ hotshots is a nice way to end the season.
-Len

AWRIGHT LEN!

More than awright.... awesome

Nice job Len. That's not an easy course.

BTW, for anyone ever considering it, Jamestown is a great race. I just wish they'd move it so it doesn't conflict with 'cross season...

That sounded like a lot of fun. Great job Len!!! You are making me look forward to racing next season!

Wow Len, impressive. It's a good course for you but still, great result considering its freakin' October.

Great result.

Tearin it up. Nice race!

More than awesome.... mega-wicked awesome.

Yeah Len!

Nice race Len.

I'll share a story about jamestown and Tom Ball, who can probably use a laugh -- or at least a roasting-- now that his ribs should be feeling better. Tom and I lined up in the front row of the 45+ race next to Paul Curley, who was my coach at the time, and his henchman -- can't remember his name -- owner of Edgartown cycles. They're sizing up Tom, a fresh face to them, trying to figure out if they should be worried or not. "Hey Bruce, who's the ringa...."

:Oh this is Tom," then almost as an afterthought, "he won the45+ NE tri points series this year." You could just about hear a pin drop.

For anyone who''s raced with Tom, he's kind of a worrier. Do I have the right clothes? Should I bring arm warmers? How many Goos....ya da ya da. On this day he decided ...right before the start...that he needed an extra water bottle! Apparently, since it was 65 degress out he t hought he needed a third! I gently tried to tell him, having done the race before, that he probably wouldn't get a chance to drink even one bottle. But Tom asked me to save his spot and off he rode to get another bottle.

Well as the race was about to begin, sans Tom, all I could hear was Curley, "Where's your ringa now?"

Tom never showed.

About thirty miles into the race I was riding at the front of a strung out pack going hells bells. Through my mental haze I could see an MRC jersey up the road and basically I was reeling him in. What? There was nobody off the front of our race!

Sure enough it was Tom Ball....off the back of the Pro 123 race!!

At the start of the race Tom was riding back to the starting line when he saw a race going up the road. He jumped into the race....but after 10 miles or so riding at a very fast clip, he looks around and realizes -- these guys are not 45!!

He had jumped into the Pro 123