Bike racers should drive red cars, of course. So imagine the nice kick I got when I saw our new team mate Laura Lee landing at 5 am from Brooklyn with a red rental car! Ms. Garmin was in the co-pilot seat (without Colleen, the girls are lost). I could leisurely concentrate on other essential missions like finding a place on our way for good coffee.
And happily caffeinated we arrived in East Hartland, the Tokeneke Road Race hosting town, with enough time in hand to check the course that neither Laura Lee nor I had raced before. After the recon, we still had plenty of time to debate the bike racers' infinite and fundamental pre-race questions - did I pin that number right, where should we "hide" the car key, bathroom now or in 5 minutes, vanilla or chocolate gels, and those socks, are they good with this weather? etc. Luckily I am always very clear about the socks business - in the summer I only race in Santini socks. Yesterday my big concern was about the wheel set to use (because of the bad road condition). I shared my wheel anxiety with Laura Lee who had then her own dilemma (the car key). I decided to settle this tricky wheel situation by putting one wheel of each set I brought, for style if for no other better reason: one red tire on a Mavic wheel, one black tire on a Reynolds wheel. Classy. Later in the day, my coach seemed to raise his eyebrows when he discovered this colorful setting - I suspect he is a bit conservative with colors. With those pre-race dilemmas more or less resolved, we relaxed a bit and warmed-up on some nice little roads, motivated, among other things, by the chase of a suburban dog craving for cyclists' fresh blood.
In any case, at some point, the race did start. Alas, nothing very dramatic, no bullet fired in the air, no Mr. Prudhomme in a race car with a flag in his hand, but a nice man with a moustache, a former crit racer he confessed, who announced "30 seconds... 10... 5... now go!". And off we were on the bucolic roads of Connecticut. We started to drill it as soon as we engaged the first rise, a climb in 3 steps. On the 2nd step of the climb, Kristen (Stage5) launched a furious attack. She zipped right by me, like Wonder Woman on her skyship rocket. She sped away, chased by Beth (Anthem). The two of them got a gap that they kept over the 3rd step of the climb. Silke, Melissa (both Kenda), and I chased. We got them back before the descent. We all recovered a bit and were joined by 5-6 other riders, among them I was very happy to see Laura Lee speeding in the descent like Fangio. We started the last climb of the 1st lap at a controlled tempo. It picked up half way, and then at the 1 km mark, Kristen attacked again. She was caught shortly after the end of the climb and we lost some women in that final acceleration over the top of the climb. At this point we were 8 in the lead group I think: Kristen, 2 Kenda, 2 Anthem, 1 Wheelworks, 1 Simple Principles, 1 other girl I believe, and me. While riding with this nice group, I observed Kristen's riding style - she had amazed me by her attack and solo win on Devil’s Kitchen the previous week. Her riding is very powerful. Such a tiny woman in the big ring on 5% climbs, amazing. On the second lap, she did it again, attacking on the 2nd step of the climb. No one was there on her wheel and it was too late, she was gone. She stayed for a while at 10 seconds of us, and then 15s, and then I think we got distracted by some attacks and counter attacks from Anthem, and she was suddenly nowhere to be seen. As a group of 7 we worked ok together, but it did not feel like we were really chasing. It confused me a bit, but I thought that I had no business leading the chase when 2 teams had 2 riders in our group. In the final climb, Beth attacked at the very bottom, the tempo was very solid. I could feel the excitement and tension of the finish line approaching, the tempo went harder and harder as we passed the 1 km mark. We lost 1 girl, and then Silke and Nancy lost a bit of ground I think. We were 4 in the front as we prepared for the sprint. Beth started her sprint early, I stayed on a wheel looking for the finishing flags as we passed the top of the climb. I saw the flags, and off I went, in the saddle, and I crossed the line first of our chasing group. Kristen had arrived on her own more than 2 minutes ago.
I finished 2nd and Laura Lee finished 13th of the women 1/2/3 field.
David raced a bit later. I don't know the details of his race, but he got the second podium of the day for our team, finishing 3rd in the Masters 35+. Rockstar!
Sunday at Tokeneke was a blast. Thanks Laura Lee for sharing this beautiful time. Thanks Coach for checking on us after the race. Thanks to my friend Scott Wells for taking the picture. And as always, thanks a lot to our sponsors who support the team.
