Older news- Philly Phlyer (Saturday + TTT)

From two weekends ago-

Once again we left Ithaca in a snowstorm...when you're leaving for a bike race in a snowstorm, it's probably a reasonable assumption that you are an idiot who shouldn't be racing so soon in the season. But that's us. Luckily this time the snow changed over to rain so that we could make the drive in a decent time. So that's improvement over Rutgers' weekend right there!

Saturday's race was a moderately hilly 15 mile loop that A's were supposed to do 3 times. There was a lot of build up about the hills, so I was excited that this could be a race to make a move that would stick. All that talk for nothing...

The D classes got to ride the course at 8am in a moderate rain before the real weather system came rolling in and began washing out the course. Before it got really bad, the climbers drove the loop to find both the uphills/attack points and the apparently dangerous downhill turns; several of our riders slid out on the smooth/wet pavement during the race. It was a fun looking course- the hills weren't as bad as everyone made them sound, but the downhills were a whole other story. There were more than a handful of >90 degree turns at the bottom of fairly significant descents and a lot of very sharp bends in the road. I really wished I had disc brakes on my road bike, knowing how ineffective sidepulls were going to be...

As it turned out, the course preview was a waste of time and gas. About an hour later, the officials cancelled the road race and changed it to a downtown criterium in Phoenixville. Apparently a lot of mud was washing onto the roads...right in those tricky corners and descents...they don't want us to have any fun! I decided that the rain combined with the crappy course made this a lose-lose situation for me. The benefit:risk ratio wasn't there, so I didn't race and instead rode the rollers and stayed dry. There wasn't any carnage in the A race, but it just didn't look fun- I think I made the right decision.

On Sunday, we woke up to much better weather (save the wind), but much colder temperatures. The weather channel was reporting 30 with a windchill of 18. I was thinking some sort of blue or violet wax would be kicking today...oh wait. Damn.

The lineup for the day was a 8.4 mile team time trial followed later in the day by a circuit race around much of the same course. Unfortunately, the TTT meant that I had to race before 9am...what the hell!?!? But I was excited to use my disc wheel and my other stupid aero equipment, so I think that made it marginally more tolerable.

The Cornell A class TTT was, in a word: a disaster. We kind of assumed that we all had enough experience to know how to paceline together. That was a crucial mistake. Right out of the start we got a little separated in a semi-technical downhill section. Steve let it run while I was serving as sweeper. Ben was a little hesitant in the downhill turns, so we had little gaps open up in our team. I wasn't too worried though...we'd get it under control when we hit the flat/straight sections, right?

Wrong. Our rotation was either slow or non-existent and by the first turnaround (<2 miles in) we dropped our fourth rider, Jake. He's a strong rider, so I don't know how we managed that. In any case, the time is recorded on the third finisher, so we made the decision to go on without him. As we pulled out of the roundabout, we got blasted with a headwind that would end up causing problems for the entire day. I pushed it pretty hard to fight the wind...and ended up gapping Steve and Ben by 20m or so before I realized it. So I sat up a bit to wait. Once they were back on my wheel, I picked it up again...and gapped them again. Hmmm. I should really re-think my strategy here.

As it turned out, Steve was in pain from both his knee and his hands freezing to the aero bars, and Ben was just having an off day. So I ended up pulling them for 85-90% of the race and possibly sacrificing a bit of my own race for later. It wasn't too bad- I just settled into an honest pace and kept it even, checking the shadows to see if they were still in tow. Tiny gaps opened here and there, but overall we started to work a little bit better. As the finish approached, we actually started to rotate leads and look like a semi-competent unit. I imagine if we had a few more miles, we could have beaten Team CSC with our precision...

I think our finish was fairly indicative of the problems we had, but we certainly weren't the slowest team on the day. We just need more practice and I think we'll be in the points next time.