After a few race cancellations, Battenkill ended up being only my 2nd race of the year, which is not optimal, but my training was good leading up to it. The level of the juniors field had increased from last year, with 110 total riders, including several French-Canadian teams and American juniors from all over the country. I rode the course on Saturday with my teamies, and remembered how beautiful the countryside is there; plus, the course is a really fun one. HPC/List had David, Justin, Shane, and I racing. We were small in numbers but strong and had a solid plan to check up on each other throughout the race, get to the front before each dirt section or decisive climb, and save energy to follow late-race moves. Things get more complicated on the road though. The race was hard because even when the pace was relaxed (actually, even more when the pace was relaxed) there was a constant struggle for position with people pushing and shoving, completely ignoring the yellow line rule, and even riding through dirt and front yards to move up the side of the pack. We didn't have the best communication coming into the first big climb and Justin drilled it on the downhill to keep good position, while I lost position, so as a result Justin and I both ended up having to chase back on with Michael Reidenbach after the climb because it split up a lot. The group was back together after a few kilometers and more and more riders caught back up as we headed towards the first feedzone. The pace was moderate with a few attacks until the longest climb of the course that comes at about the 50 kilometer point (halfway). The pace was crazy up this climb and I suffered bad to crest the climb with the second group. David was in a small front group/breakaway while Justin was in the second group that I had just barely tagged onto the back of. Just after the crest I flatted. I continued to ride the flat as it leaked, because I was on tubulars, and tried to keep the group in sight. The wheel van ended up being about 10 or 15 minutes behind, so my race was over at that point. I ended up riding to the finish with Shane who flatted 8 miles in. I felt great during the race, and next year I can have a real go at it. David cramped near the end and finished 14th, while Justin rode hard to drop the second group and finish 16th.
Next weekend after that I did Carl Dolan. I attacked a handful of times in the 3/4, basically whenever I was lucky enough to get to the front but it is hard to stay away more than a lap in that race. I did the 1/2/3 race which was also not super fast, except that I started to cramp halfway through. Other than that it was easy except that I almost got dropped every lap on the downhill because I was super spun out. It is a bad course, but racing is fun for me and over 60 miles of crit style racing is good training at least.
This past week we did a spring training camp in Chris Gould's house, right near the page valley RR course. The weather was great and the riding was great. We did some awesome climbing and previewed the sweet Shenandoah time trial course, did a 20km TT. It was fun to hang with my teamies as always. Now Justin is off to Gila this week, and David and I are targeting Ephrata this weekend.
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