On the line, ready to start.
I raced wit the Cat. 3/4's today at the Tour de Parc at Cedar Creek. I missed it last year and the race was not held the year before that. The whole family came by to watch the race, and that was really special.
I got there early and picked up my race number. After watching the Cat. 5 race, I took a warmup ride down to Jones Beach and back. A few minutes later we were lining up for the start (photo above). There seemed to be small breakaways off the front for practically the whole race. Mostly, just one or two guys at a time. At one point it looked like the field would split in half but it was pulled back together.
This was one of the biggest fields I've raced in, at least 50 racers (40 were pre-registered by Friday night). There was constant shifting of lines, but amazingly, no crashes, even with the tight hairpin on one end of the 1-mile course.
I had two laps where I tried to bridge to a lone breakaway with two other riders but we never did quite make it. The pack eventually caught us. One scary moment, there was a loud "bang" and some guy's front wheel just exploded (a bunch of spokes just gave way). He kept it upright somehow and drifted to the side of the course, but those of us behind him had to hustle back to the group.
Short clip of the peloton passing by the start/finish with 4 laps to go.
In the end, the finish was a group sprint, and I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. Maybe they will post results online in the next couple of days. There were two other East End riders in the race but none of us placed in the top 8 places.
Tomorrow, Early Birds on tap.
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