Minuteman Road Club

Headed out to Ravena for the cat3/4 (which, from the looks of the results, did not actually include any cat 4's) with PJ and Tyler. Thought about the 40+, but always nicer to race with teammates.
Neutral start of 3 miles. PJ is tailing the moto and gets a gap on the field, so I immediately start blocking Coming thru the feedzone during neutral and PJ and I right at the head of the field. Figured enjoy this while it lasts!

First lap seems kinda dawdling. Hit Tracy Rd and Whitbeck climbs and I easily match the front pacing. Too easy I think. I'll be proven correct shortly..
Thru the finish climb stretch of lap one and nobody tries anything except one guy who goes off solo. Nobody reacts. Tracy Rd is definitely harder but I hang in. Ditto for start of Whitbeck. Unfortunately I come a bit unhinged the 2nd pitch of Whitbeck and after the fast S-turn dip into the next uphill section get dropped with a few others. But, I easily pull away from them on the finish of the climb and find myself in no-mans land. Oh screw it, I figured we would all regroup but if I sat up and waited and we didn't catch back on I'd be pretty ticked off. Into TT mode, catch some guys from other fields (no officials around ) and just before the first right turn catch back on. Hang out at the back and probably a good 2 miles later Juan Lopera from 545 plus 4-5 others do indeed get back. Now there are 3 guys dangling off the front. Nobody really chasing. Into the final 10K of the lap and the gap is growing. I see PJ at the front, but he and Tyler should sit in. Okay, I figure I'll probably get dropped next time on the climbs so I make up my mind to try and bridge. Might as well see if I can get dropped ahead of the field. Juan pulls up beside me, he says he got a good recovery so I ask him to go with me and he says why the hell not. Attack hard on the right and we quickly starting rotating. Field reacts. Okay, this isn't the worst if I can give PJ and Tyler a free tow back to the leaders. Throw down again and one other guy very briefly joins in. I notice a white jersey guy sitting on me and try to get him to pull thru but nothing doing. Nobody else either so time to sit up. Fun try though. Well, 2 of the guys stayed away (and were actually joined by white jersey guy, who won, on a ridiculous downhill bridge).

Last lap, start of Tracy Rd I hang in and actually feel not too bad. At the road crossing into the upper part of Tracy however there's a surge and I can't match it. Two guys move up to me on the downhill off Tracy and begin to sit up, but there's a good gap between us and rest of the field. I drill it on the descent and they get the picture, and the three of us work together, up Whitbeck climbs and into the flats. We work well together, but on flat/downhill sections the other two seem to need more recovery. So I take over and yell to work the downhills and lets not get caught. I'm taking longer, pretty hard pulls. Cornell dude begins taking some good pulls while striped jersey guy is saying he's gassed. I continue to take extra on the front and with ~8K to go on a straightaway we can see the support car and the back of the field. Unfortunately it's really just me and Cornell dude but we give it a go, and when a tow truck pulls out in front of us we attack striped jersey guy and try for the draft of the truck. We do pull some time back but it's clearly too little too late as we're approaching the finish 1K climb. We take turns leading out and he comes around me on the line. No big deal. 17th overall but feel really good about the race, put some very hard solo digs in, and I really think I was the impetus for our little 3 person chase to stay well clear of another pack of 6-7 riders.

Nice job Dave. It is ironic: The Cornell guy who pipped you is the exact same guy I rode with last year at the same race for the last 1/2 lap after we got dropped on the final climb. Probably like you, another guy and I did most of the pulls and the Cornell guy pipped me at the line.

Interesting John. Although this year I will say that he helped out much more than our 3rd guy (who we dropped with ~2 miles to go). Initially I thought Cornell guy was going to be the one sitting in, but in the last 10-12K he was putting some good help in and he instigated the attack to shed our weaker mate. We actually almost caught 1 guy who fell off from the main pack. I still say that I did the majority of the work though, especially in the early miles after Whitbeck.
Going back over things today, my one regret (mistake) was that I waited too long to go for the bridge. After chasing back on, I saw the break form and begin to slightly gain steam. I decided I wanted to try and bridge, but hesitated thinking I needed a bit more recovery. Should have just dug in for one more effort when the gap was a bit smaller rather than waiting to sit in a bit more.

Hard report to write - I wanted more.

Dave captured the spirit of the race well in his report. His attack at the end of lap two nearly resulted in a break but a few key guys reacted to squash it. Moments like this definitely wore legs out though and impacted the final selection.

I have two regrets from this one, the first Tyler and I discussed on the way home. The winning break Dave mentioned was maybe 20 seconds in sight when we hit the uphill right hander onto the highway after the last of the hard climbs. We were down to maybe 12 at this point. Though we were all totally gassed, I think a little bit of cooperation or a strong pull would have brought it back. Instead, they found a rhythm, we couldn't get organized, and they grabbed over a minute just like that.

My second regret is not winding it up sooner on the sprint to the finish. Tyler led it out with a strong pull the at start of the final climb (1k uphill finish - think Sunapee, but narrow road with more turns). He forced the group to react hard out of fear that he'd ride away. It was a good effort! Things strung out, then came together and seemed to slow at the feed zone, about 500m from the line, at which point I drifted to the front in a nice position to go for it, but hesitated, waiting to for a closer launching pad. BIG MISTAKE! At 300m (it seemed like a second later) a car came down the road (apparently officials let a local motorist through?), the pack surged, and the sprint began. Suddenly the road isn't so big and we''re five across, now absorbing a dropped rider who's trying to finish his race from an earlier start, and I nearly crash into him but somehow snake past for the sprint for the line, which is now very close (It's funny how much one second really does matter in this game) Tyler charged through for 7th - pretty impressive after the dig at the start of the climb and several aggressive efforts earlier in the race. I rounded out the top 10 a few wheels back, but realize it could have been a lot different. As in a better result.

Capital Region is such a great road race. Numbers were clearly down this year. The forecast was pretty miserable, so that couldn't have helped, but I sure hope these types of races stick around.

Smaller P/1/2 field usually means the race is harder. A CCB guy attacked literally right after the neutral roll ended and impressively held it for the win. The main field hit the climbs hard but was soft pedaling the flats. Attacks went and I missed all of them.

The “main field” of 8ish guys was severely reduced, with ~12ish guys off the front and many guys off the back or DNFing. We kept a good hard-ish tempo and guys kept dropping form our group until there was only 3 of us with less than 1 lap to go. It was Alex Carmona, Ian Clarke and I. Clarke was doing the least work in the group. We all thought the race was over for us, and we were racing for 10th-ish place, but Alex and I kept working.

We caught one rider dropped from a chase group up the road. He informed us that the chase groups had come together, except for the solo CCB off the front solo. He said they were all tired and not working hard at all, so the four of us worked very hard with ~15km to go and caught the group. 3 guys were off the front. Two guys, (one being Clarke), attacked our chase group that was just soft pedaling along. I had the legs to go with them, but hesitated and they were gone.

I made a few attacks but every single one was covered, most by Anthony Clark. Guys were trying to conserve for the final climb. I finished 8th, which I wasn’t really satisfied with, especially when I learned that Ian Clarke (who I was with almost the whole race) finished 2nd. The race changed sooo much in the last 15km. Usually, when a strong break goes in a P/1/2 race, you never see them again, but this race proves that’s not always the case, and you should never quit a race, give up, or stop chasing because you didn’t “make the break”. Anything can happen.