May 22, 2010
69 miles
3rd place - Thom Coupe
http://www.bikereg.com/Results/2010/05/22-Lake-Sunapee.asp
The Sunapee Road Race never seizes to disappoint in amazement, and this year’s addition was no exception. In years past the race has seen all sorts of differing levels of excitement with episodes of misfortune and strange occurrences being of the norm and what is seemingly being understood as the nature of this spring, New England event. It truly is a great race with challenging terrain on scenic NH roads, but with vast differences in weather from year to year (it was close to 80degrees and sunny this year, but usually is cold and raining and has even snowed in previous years), along with crashes, traffic, and run-ins with animals (I once dodged a duck on the back stretch), one never knows what to expect when racing around Lake Sunapee.
Steve, Andrew and I lined up eager to see what was in store for the day, excited to race the local race, and ready to show everyone that we are the dominant team in New England. All was going as planned as Steve and I set the tone of the race early on, and were soon joined by Andrew to help control, find and set the rhythm of the race by alternating attacks, counters and marking moves as a team unit. I attacked at the base of a steep climb on the second lap, and was soon joined by 7 others, and the 8 of us established a gap over the top of the climb. The day’s breakaway of 8 consisted of; 2 Team Ora presented by Independent Fabrication riders (Robby King and Kevin Wolfson), 2 Wheelhouse / NCC riders (Alec Donahue and Jeremy Durrin), Tim Mitchell of CCB, Gavin Mannion of Trek-Livestrong, an Embrocation rider, and myself. We worked well together and our gap soon grew to over a minute. I was nervous that we might be caught as the pace stared to slow while we all settled into the break, so I started taking longer pulls gradually upping the pace. Seeing as 2 of the 6 teams represented in the break had 2 riders from the same team, my intentions were to try and wear the break down so that I could hopefully turn the screws to my favor in the run-in to the line. My longer pulls were soon matched by Gavin Mannion, who showed his strength early on by pulling over one of the climbs and dropping the Embrocation rider from the break. The last time up the steep hill, where the break had initially formed the lap before, Robby King launched a solo attack with his teammate, Kevin blocking and disrupting the break’s response, which helped Robby’s gap grow. Gavin and myself started rotating and worked together to eventually bring Robby back close to 6miles to go, with subsequent help from the other breakaway companions. As it all came back together, a bit of cat and mouse and the timid stare-downs began as the pace picked back up for the final miles. With just 1.6miles remaining, we were all jockeying for position and it was evident that fatigue was setting in amongst us all, in differing amounts. I was feeling pretty good and liked my odds until we crested one of the rollers before the round-a-bout, only to be stopped and neutralized by a race official. There was a crash in the Cat.4 field, and traffic had been stopped in order to get medical personnel to the sight of the crash, where I was later told, most all of the Cat.4 men had crashed around the round-a-bout on their way to the finish up the Mount Sunapee access road. A minute and a half after our break was stopped, the rest of the Pro 1/2/3 field caught up and was too brought to an astounding ‘stop’ just over a mile from the finish. It took awhile waiting around, wondering if the race was over, for the road to be cleared and determined safe once the Cat.4 crash victims were tended to. In this time, everyone who had been racing hard for 68miles, had more than enough time to recover and rest up while standing around confused for close to 45mins. The race was then re-started with the break receiving a 1.5min ‘head-start’ over the rest of the field to account for our advantage. In the dash to the line Gavin proved to have the best jump as the break sprinted up the finishing climb faster than I have ever seen in years past. After a long day, the road race was really more of a track race. A 1mile sprint from a dead stop with cold legs. I am not much of a sprinter and would have favored the finish without the 40min rest-stop, but that’s racing and I managed to grab 3rd in the sprint. All and all, an eventful day, and certainly one to remember.
