Meet the Team!

FUORICLASSE RACING TEAM is inviting any women interested in learning more about the team or in joining a competitive racing Team to come on a coffee ride on Sunday September 26th.

Meeting point: Sunday September 26th / Grants Tomb @ 9am.
Feel free to email fuoriclasseracing@gmail.com if you have any questions.

August 14-15 Update

Fall was in the air and the Fuoriclasse racers were on the road to Albany looking forward to another action packed day of racing. The team put in a strong performance at the Capital Region Road Race with David placing 2^nd in the 35+ field, Fabienne placing 2^nd in the Pro-3 field (winning the field sprint behind a solo break) and Colleen placing third in the women’s 40+ field. Laura Lee continued to impress. She more than held her own in a tough field, coming in 10^th overall in the Pro-3 field and was the first cat 3 over the finish line. Christophe also had a strong finish, placing 15^th out of 65 starters in his field.

Early Sunday morning, the team was at it again, racing at 6 am in the CRCA club race in Central Park. Since the women’s field was limited to cat 3 / 4 racers, Fabienne figured she’d mix it up with the men. Not surprisingly, she looked very comfortable, racing around the park with an average speed of nearly 26 mph. Meanwhile, Colleen raced aggressively in the women’s field, but had to settle for winning the field sprint for 7^th, behind the winning break.

Other weekend highlights: continued compliments on our kit design, book rec’s on the ride home, and discovering Laura Lee does, in fact, have other clothes besides her kit and pajamas.

Fabienne's Tokeneke Race Report

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.

*Complete results of Tokeneke 2010*
http://www.tokenekeclassic.com/results2010.html

Weekend Race Recap - July 10 & 11

Another stellar weekend for the Fuoriclasse team.

On Saturday David won the CRCA points race in Central Park and on Sunday Laura Lee scored her first race victory in the Pawling Mountain road race in Pawling NY. This correspondent suspects that we'll be hearing a lot more from Laura Lee in the coming weeks.

David took 4th place in the Pawling Mountain race (35+ field) but he's resolved to do better next time.

The next big race for the team is the Tour of the Catskills July 30 - Aug 1 where Fabienne will return to racing after her enforced 3 month break.

Watch out.

David's Coupe des Ameriques race report

I've heard good things about this race over the years but I've always been distracted by Fitchburg, this year I decided to break habit and head to Canada excited to race against some fresh faces.

The prologue:
I find these mass start hill climbs a little chaotic, everyone is fresh, motivated and ready to die fighting for position going into the climb. About 500M into the race I discovered that the yellow line rule is merely a recommendation in Canada as I saw my stealth position usurped by about 80 guys in the left lane - a guy on my right complained that the riders from Ontario always do that - damn Ontarians. So from 110th place I moved up at the base of the climb and kept moving up until 2k to go where 2 riders a few seconds ahead of me just wouldn't be caught so I settled for 3rd.

The TT:
Rode as hard as I could for 6th place, could have been a little quicker but for the RV that almost stopped me dead in my tracks 200M into the race. Still 3rd overall so still in the game.

The Crit:
Inspired by the Roger and Troy from Westwood who almost lapped the field together in the 40+ race I threw down a few heavy attacks early without success and finished safely in the bunch - still 3rd on GC 20 seconds back.

The RR:
The legs felt a little heavy early probably from the efforts of 2 races the day before so I took it easy early on. The race stayed together thanks to the work of a couple of coalitions at the front save for a couple of optimistic breaks that lacked the numbers to survive. At the start of the final drag to the finish I missed an acceleration and had to jump across a gap to join the race leader and the prologue winner at the front. Both riders were intent on a steady pace which discouraged me from attacking from a few K out, but inside the final 2K I sensed that I could take the win with a final kick and that's what happened. My first win of the season and enough time to move into 2nd on GC - damn those 12 seconds - Maybe I'll come back next year.

Thanks to my team mates and friends for some good company and to Beth at Discover Chiropractic for fixing my wrist.

Latest News

This past weekend found Fabienne and Colleen up in Killington, Vermont for a three day stage race. Perhaps the most memorable part of the Memorial Day weekend was seeing Fabienne back on her bike, spinning away on her trainer for the first time in a month. Fabienne was also support staff extraordinaire, cooking pasta, pinning numbers, getting Colleen to eat more, and welcoming her at the finish of every race. You'll find her race report under comments on the Killington picture below.

Next weekend David and Christophe take on the Connecticut Stage Race, while Fabienne continues her steady recovery for her come back in the Catskills and Colleen ramps up training for her next round of racing. Meanwhile, Leontine is busy racing and winning Gran Fondos in Europe.

Killington Stage Race - Stage 3 5-31-10