March 25^th, 2010

Riders:  Thom Coupe, Alister Ratcliff, William Goodfellow, and Jerome Townsend

Guest riders: Nathan Wilson, Christian Deshaies, and Josh Bartlett

Written by: Alister Ratcliff

Alister Ratcliff 14^th on the opening day of Redlands

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/26th-redlands-bicycle-classic-ne/prologue/results

                With the help of Bikereg.com/Cannondale we were able to assemble a strong squad and take part in the Redlands Bicycle Classic in 2010.  The first NRC of the year and a super tough race with all the big teams in the country taking part; Fly V Australia, Jelly Belly, United Healthcare, Bissell, Jamis, Bahati, Garmin, Spidertech, amongst others. 

                A few members of the team traveled out to do the San Dimas stage race the weekend before but I however chose to reckon some of the courses for Redlands instead of racing.  The main one’s being the Time Trial course and the Road stage for the last day.  The TT course being only 3 miles in length and only about 5 minutes away from our host house where we were staying, I probably rode the course 10 times before actually racing it. 

                Instead of giving all secrets away, I’ll say that I pinned it from the gun, the same as every other TT you have to do.  Then I got into the best rhythm I could on the steep climbs near the end of the course.  I passed 4 people on the way up in 3 miles but none of them were great TT guys and I forgot to start my stopwatch so I wasn’t sure if I had put out a good time until a ways after the event.  In the end, I was 14^th, giving us the 7^th car in the caravan!

83 mile road race
April 10th, 2010

Josh Dillon - 5th

Justin Lindine 8th

http://www.cyclingnews.com/races/tour-of-the-battenkill-ne-1/results

Team: Luke Keough, Justin Lindine, Thom Coupe, Steve Weller, Jerome Townsend, Will Goodfellow, Josh Dillon

Report: Awesome course.  83 miles.  Several hills, often coming in succession.  And 25% dirt roads.  Perfect.  Throw in a little help from mother nature with the wind and we had ourselves a good hard race.  In the first part of the race we had 2 of the fastest starters on the US cross circuit covering early moves in Jerome and Luke, as evidenced by Luke making the first move of the day.  Not long after that came back Will slipped into the 2nd break of the day to have us covered yet again.  This came back on the hard climb at about the mid-way point just after the village of Salem.  After a long dirt descent, all hands were on deck yet again as the race was constant attacks.  Justin covered a move that looked very promising as the race winning move.  Back behind in the field Will Dugan (Team Type 1) animated the race over the substantial dirt sections leading into Meeting House Rd, which was followed up by a mean pace on Meeting House rd by a CCB rider which whittled the main field down to 15 or so riders.  I countered the CCB rider with a solo move and was on my own in pursuit of Justin's group.  I was finally able to close the bridge by the crest of Stage Rd (but nearly killed myself in the process) about 7k from the finish.  By then Justin had disposed of all but 2 riders in the group, which gave us 2 out of 4 at the front of the race with only a few k to go.  But unfortunately, 1 or 2 riders at a time joined our group on the descent of Stage Rd such that we were 9 with only the flat 5k run-in to the finish remained.  And then came the attacks, and in rapid succession.  This split the group of 9 into a group of 5 with myself included.  And we continued to attack each other.  Not wanting to sprint Will at the line, i gave it all at 1k to go and held a tenuous gap until about 500m to go.  This cost me any sort of sprint so i rolled in at 5th, with Justin just behind in 8th.  If i had to give out an MVP award on the day it would be tough with almost all of the team executing their roles to a T...but if i had to give one out, it would go to Steve for watching over Justin and I in the first half of the race...pulling us around, and selling himself for the result of the team.

Michael Schott Memorial Circuit Race:  AKA: "Marblehead"  

March 28th

Team: Justin, Josh, Luke, and Steve

Result: 1st and 4th

http://www.bikereg.com/Results/2010/03/28-Michael-Schott-Race.asp

   When the four of us (Myself, Josh, Luke, and Steve) arrived at the sandy beach parking area that serves as registration for Marblehead we were greeted by a stiff cold wind blowing off the ocean and causing big waves to break over the seawall that leads to the point where the race is run. Thirty-nine degrees and windy... Great.  It might have looked nice from inside the car, but the question soon became, "how many base layers should I wear?" 

   We went in with a plan that would allow us to exploit the early season eagerness of the other racers and the courses nature for making it a lot easier to sit in than race the front.  Since the first half of the race is often dominated by the same pattern of, break-over eager chase down-counter break-repeat,  we decided that the best thing to do with our limited squad was to wait out the first half of early attacks and then when the serious moves began at the half way point, start putting ourselves in the moves.  If all else failed, we knew that we could always ride for a field sprint with our man Luke Keough. 

   Things began and played out just as we predicted.  There were countless attacks off the front, many from the seemingly endless CCB squad, who must have had 20 people in the race.  However they were all doomed by the buffeting of the salty wind on the backside of the course  and the pelotons desire to constantly bring everything back together.  Meanwhile, we sat tight and out of the wind (along with most of the other heavy hitters) biding our time for the real action to start.  Soon enough, and just slightly before the actual half-way point of the race, the attacks started getting more serious with the likes of Eric Schildge (Mountain Khakis) and Ted King (IF) taking digs off the front in the attempt to start the winning move.  En masse we were at the front slipping ourselves into every promising move.  After coming through for 11 (?) laps to go the group swallowed up a move, and I followed a surging Cameron Cogburn (CCB) off the front on the slight climb of the backside of the course.  Turning around as we crested the top of the rise I was surprised that we had a decent gap open already over the field with CCB and BikeReg.com / Cannondale doing a good job of shutting the power down on the front as soon as we rolled off.  Unsure of whether a two man move could possibly work for that long, I figured the worst thing that could happen was that I took any impetus for my guys to have to work behind me off and gave them a potential free ticket in any move that would bridge up. 

For the next four laps we worked together against the ripping wind and the chasing pack.  Luckily Cameron is a pretty big diesel of a rider too, so when we started rolling it wasn't too bad for us to keep it wound up to speed.  Unfortunately, after those first four laps I looked back to see a bridge group coming that didn't have any BikeReg Blue in it and did have Schildge from Mtn Khakis.  I knew that if that group got to us I would be hard pressed to find some creative way to win the race that didn't involve a head to head sprint with Schildge.  For the next several laps I took some monster pulls along the seawall section on the backside of the course where the wind was the strongest to keep our gap pried open over the chasers.  This coupled with my teammates working behind in the field to reel it back in finally broke the elastic and when the field caught the chasers our gap rocketed back up enough that the officials brought a car into the gap.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, all the hard efforts to stay away from the chase had begun to take their toll on Cameron.  At first I thought he might be playing games and trying to sit on, but as I put in some digs on the rise before the finish and instantly opened a gap I began to suspect otherwise.  When he caught back on he was quick to broker a "don't drop me and I won't contest the sprint" deal.  Sweet.  I did the lions share of the work for the last couple of laps, with Cameron doing just enough to  give me some breathing time.  As we came into the hill before the finish, still out of sight of the field, I wasn't crazy about the possibility of him changing his mind on his heat-of-the-moment promise so I started my move from a few hundred meters out.  To my relief I opened up the gap with no trouble and had time to take a nice posted up finish coast.  After pulling it to the side of the road I watched as the field came barreling down on the line with Luke taking a hard fought third in the field sprint for fifth overall.   Nice.

   So for the first team race of the season it was a pretty good showing.  We came into it with a plan, we executed the plan just as we intended, and despite being somewhat outnumbered and facing some tough cold and windy conditions, we rode smart and put ourselves into the position to win.  Hopefully this early success will bode well for things to come this season, especially as we bring more and more of the team together at the bigger races.