Race Report: ECCC Yale "Lux Et Velocitas" Weekend

In summary: a mostly strong weekend for me. Cat 2 upgrade points: 7/25. MIT grows closer to being the top ECCC team.

This past weekend saw us racing in New Haven, CT, home of delicious Pepe’s pizza. Try their white clam pie if you get a chance. It’s quite good, well worth a 30 minute wait and riding in a rainy headwind with a pizza pie in your hand. (From experience.)

Saturday started with the last individual time trial of the season. This course offered climbing, cornering, and long straightaways. It really favored an all-rounder. I had a strong performance, the strongest TT performance I’ve had all season, to place third. I was just two seconds behind second place! Darn. The winner was over 20 seconds faster, so I still have some work to do.

The favorable morning weather turned to cold, rain, and wind for the afternoon’s circuit race. Our race was shortened to 90 minutes, which was still long enough to make me and many other riders seriously hypothermic. I decided to race with a rain jacket, which was a stupid idea. It made me less aero. I was working so hard to keep up with the pack, that I was toasted by the time the obvious race-winning break took off. I held on for a depressing 22nd place finish.

That race really took a lot out of me. I cracked yet another carbon tubular rim on the corners on the circuit – great, more money to spend. I forgot my rollers at the course. In general, I was just exhausted and cross for the rest of the evening. It’s no fun when you’re the only A rider and everyone else just wants to leave while you’re coming in from your race.

Sunday’s races were both late in the afternoon, giving me plenty of time to get homework done in the morning. The crit course was the bottom of the circuit course, so we were all familiar with it. In the Men’s A crit, I stayed toward the front of the pack and avoided doing work. I had a good, but not great, line into the finishing stretch, taking a barely acceptable 9th. As soon as that was done, I started warming up for the USAC Men’s 3 / 4 crit. I was absolutely spent from the Men’s A crit, but the pace was so slow in the second race that I just had to wait for the end. Repeating my first mistake, I had a poor line and, lacking a real sprint, got third.

I’m looking forward to the Dartmouth weekend coming up. There will be a TTT and a road race to really put us through our paces. I’m most excited about Jane’s first race. She’ll be doing the Women’s Intro road race on Sunday.