Whaling City Cyclone - 4/5 Open

It was pouring and pretty miserable in New London, CT on Sunday morning when my brother and I arrived at the Whaling City Cyclone course—probably not the best race to do while getting over a cold. I warmed up on the course for 30 minutes and was thoroughly soaked by the time we lined up. At the very end of my warm-up, my legs had just started to open up a bit. The field was tiny and a UMass rider pushed the pace from the start. Within a few laps, it was just me, the UMass rider and a UConn guy at the front with a sizable gap. The course was technical with six corners and I found that I could pedal through almost all of the turns while the other two guys in the break would slow for every turn. I used this to my advantage and spent a lot of time on the front, riding smoothly and forcing them to catch back up after every turn.

The first prime saw the three of us in a bunch sprint and I nipped the UConn rider at the line to win. To test out a different strategy for the next prime, I threw an attack on the backstretch, cornered hard around the last two turns, and easily coasted in to win. I let the other two guys duke it out for the third prime and then decided to attack at the fourth and final prime. I won it and sprinted through the line with only the UMass guy following—the UConn guy was cooked and couldn’t hang on. The two of us continued trading pulls until the last lap. I felt that I had more strength left and better cornering than the other guy and figured I wouldn’t leave it up to sprint. He had just finished a pull as we came through the finish for the last time. I jumped and sprinted through the line. He was having trouble staying on my wheel, but I was also going a bit too fast into the second and third turns. I felt my rear tire skid a bit in the second turn and tried to dump some speed before the third turn, but was a little too late and I felt the bike come out from under me on the wet pavement. It was more of a slide than a crash, but it did put me right in the other rider’s line on the outside of turn 3. He didn’t go down, but he did hit the curb funny and got a flat.

I had visions of Denis Menchov in the final stage of the Giro, feeling like the win was slipping away. After opening up my rear brake, the wheel would turn again, so I jumped back on and finished the final lap for the win. I talked with the UMass guy after the race and apologized for the crash. He was very understanding and said he’d had a lot of fun riding in the break with me despite the end result. If the bike was in better shape I would have done the straight Cat 4 race as well, but I thought better of it.