Reported by Josh Dillon
This year we were kindly blessed with a new race to fill the downtime between
Somerville and Nature Valley. In addition to the excitement of fresh
parcours, there was a Individual Time Trial to compliment the Circuit Race and Road
Race to make for a nice weekend of racing. The courses were laid out in
the northwest corner of CT and even crossed into southwestern MA for portions
of the road race. Anybody familiar with the area knows there to be little
flat roads (the old Tour of Connecticut host city of Torrington was nearby) and
there is a likelihood of fantastic early summer weather, which is exactly what
we had...we being Thom Coupe, Josh Lipka, Steve Weller, Justin Lindine, and
myself.
The TT was a rolling 8 mile
course, nothing too steep or sustained, which was a great opportunity to race
the TT bike for the first time this year and work out some of the kinks prior
to Nature Valley. I had a better than expected result with a 2nd place finish,
only 10 seconds out of 1st. However, those 10 seconds would prove to be
difficult to overcome during the next two stages in the absence of any steep,
sustained climbs. Not to say we didn't give it a try with the team
attacking repeatedly during the circuit race. Had the circuit race been
another 30 to 60 minutes longer (only 24 miles) we could have made something
stick. And on Sunday's big road race stage (92 miles) we executed a day
long pace when the GC leader went into an early move. After the team
killed it on the front of the race for ~50 miles, i bridged up to the early
move anxious to attack the GC to make up the 10 second deficit. However
the I was not able to shake him, and left myself open to a counter attack by
4th overall which bumped us down to 3rd on the final GC.
http://www.bikereg.com/Results/2009/05/30-CT-Stage-Race.asp
