Minuteman Road Club

13 September 2015 Quad CX Elite
I woke up sore and fatigued from Silk City the day before and was expecting a mediocre result. The weather was supposed to be wet but the rain held off and the course was in perfect condition. I staged second row, didn’t have a good start and was in the bottom 50% at corner 1. I passed people for a few laps and made it up to Rowell; we chased down Berliner and formed a group of 3 with Morse (a Cat 1 and UCI racer) still off the front since the holeshot. I was feeling really good and thought about trying to drop them but I decided against it. We worked together for 1.5 laps but then approaching the end of the fire road I attacked. I had 2 laps left with just Morse ahead of me by ~15 seconds. I closed down the gap steadily but never caught him, finishing 2nd/23, 9 seconds behind Morse. I felt incredibly good throughout the race. I think that if I attacked Rowell and Berliner earlier I would have had a better chance of catching Morse and potentially winning.
The course was amazing and the slight tweaks the organizers made from last year were great.
This is the best result I’ve ever had and I’m hoping similar results will follow for the rest of the season!

Brilliant Patrick. Attacking and dropping Mike is no mean feat.

Awesome work man.

Nice work Patrick!

Carrying some good form from GMSR. Congrats on a strong weekend!

Great to see you on the Podium Patrick

Congats!

cbusick wrote:Great to see you on the Podium Patrick

That's gonna be his new nick name "Podium Patrick!"

Well done man!!

Great work man I would like to point out he also beat Mike Wissell. That is also no easy feat kudos to you man!

Thanks guys!
PJ also made the podium in his race, lets see that report!

Pj and I lined up for the 3/4 race, it was on off mist and light rain. We both slotted in on the front row for the first race of the season. The official blew the whistle and we were off. I took the hole-shot and forced a selection early. It was Alex Meier, Chris Goguen and I. After lighting up the first few sections we had a gap of about 15 seconds on the rest of the field, coming into the back stretch of the course Alex had a mechanical and his seat-post slipped all the way down forcing him to pit for his second bike, this slowed our roll and Chris and I let off the gas a little to regroup with some other riders because we didn't feel confident in going off the front with just 2 people that early. We were joined by Zach Curtis, Jeff Fairbanks and a few others. We sat in a group of 6 for another lap or so until on the climb on the back stretch of the course I see PJ and Nick Smith crushing the fire road to join our group. They make contact and somebody else attacks the group and we start to all shatter, PJ and nick come by me at this point and less than half a lap later I see PJ on the front pushing the pace trying to get some separation. I ended up imploding on the last lap but still taking a 9th place so thats okay. PJ ended up in 3rd! overall awesome showing from MRC this weekend! saw some guys in the 4/5 race and Pat crushed the 1/2/3! White park and Suckerbrook this weekend! Followed by Midnight Ride on Wednesday!

Nolan summed up our race nicely. Nolan definitely helped push the pace during the first half of the race, which wore out many of the guys I ended up passing. I had a poor clip-in and sluggish start and honestly thought I was about to have a lousy race, but stayed close enough to Nolan's group to catch back on and attack the power sections. The slight changes they made to the course were great. Patrick, unreal, dude. Keep it going.