Nantucket Cycling Club -- Crooked Lane Crit
Well there wauts bad news and good news about this race. The bad news was that I was doing pretty darn well when my &$&#@ brand new Dura Ace weel just broke for no good reason. On of the fancy nail head spokes just unthreaded and stripped itself from the hub and then I was out.
The good news, I guess was that I rushed back and grabbed my camera and got some shots of the race. Here is the break away group coming around the final corner in the next-to-last lap:
The leader with the yellow jersey is Nate Miller. He won this jersey last year as the person with the best combined time in the summer's four races (two "mountain", more like sand actually, one crit, and a road race.) He's a "senior" which means early twenties. He's strong. The guy behind him in black is Todd Burns, Nate's training buddy and moving up from the triathelete thing into pure cycling. Todd is very strong and a great guy. Hunter is the third guy with blue shoulders and white. Hunter is my training partner and I guess you'd have to say I'm his goat. Hunter is strong and very race smart. The last guy in yellow is Mark Horan, one of the tennis pros on the island and a really really strong cyclist. I ride with him a couple of mornings a week and I don't actually look forward to it. He can lead so hard it just makes you want to quit (and a lot of less dogged people than me do). In case you didn't get it, Hunter and Mark are a "team" and Nate and Todd are the other "team".
Here we are at the end of the final lap. As you can see, Hunter and Nate are all that's left as far as first place contenders go. Mark and Hunter executed a strategy a little way back and dropped Todd and Nate going up a hill to this corner. You really have to cut this corner tight and sprint out of it. So getting dropped just before it means you have to work hard to catch back up right after you take it. You can see that Nate is doing just this. And you might think that it has worked for him, since he is now in the lead. But the bicycle racers out there will tell you that that's not exaclty where you want to be 100 yards before the finish. Hunter has just been given an easy ride up the hill before the corner. Nate had to sprint to catch up. Now Hunter will sit on Nate's wheel for a few seconds and gather his strength while Nate does all the work. Hunter wins by a nose.
Bicycle racing is so cerebral.
Don't know how Hunter got the grass stuck through his neck and lived.
These boys are going to be very dangerous in just a few years.
All the Crooked Lane Crit pictures (retouched and not) are online here if you want to dig through them. If you do this, let me know if you think I missed a good one in my frenzy to tell the story of how the race was won.
The good news, I guess was that I rushed back and grabbed my camera and got some shots of the race. Here is the break away group coming around the final corner in the next-to-last lap:
The leader with the yellow jersey is Nate Miller. He won this jersey last year as the person with the best combined time in the summer's four races (two "mountain", more like sand actually, one crit, and a road race.) He's a "senior" which means early twenties. He's strong. The guy behind him in black is Todd Burns, Nate's training buddy and moving up from the triathelete thing into pure cycling. Todd is very strong and a great guy. Hunter is the third guy with blue shoulders and white. Hunter is my training partner and I guess you'd have to say I'm his goat. Hunter is strong and very race smart. The last guy in yellow is Mark Horan, one of the tennis pros on the island and a really really strong cyclist. I ride with him a couple of mornings a week and I don't actually look forward to it. He can lead so hard it just makes you want to quit (and a lot of less dogged people than me do). In case you didn't get it, Hunter and Mark are a "team" and Nate and Todd are the other "team".
Here we are at the end of the final lap. As you can see, Hunter and Nate are all that's left as far as first place contenders go. Mark and Hunter executed a strategy a little way back and dropped Todd and Nate going up a hill to this corner. You really have to cut this corner tight and sprint out of it. So getting dropped just before it means you have to work hard to catch back up right after you take it. You can see that Nate is doing just this. And you might think that it has worked for him, since he is now in the lead. But the bicycle racers out there will tell you that that's not exaclty where you want to be 100 yards before the finish. Hunter has just been given an easy ride up the hill before the corner. Nate had to sprint to catch up. Now Hunter will sit on Nate's wheel for a few seconds and gather his strength while Nate does all the work. Hunter wins by a nose.
Bicycle racing is so cerebral.
Don't know how Hunter got the grass stuck through his neck and lived.
These boys are going to be very dangerous in just a few years.
All the Crooked Lane Crit pictures (retouched and not) are online here if you want to dig through them. If you do this, let me know if you think I missed a good one in my frenzy to tell the story of how the race was won.
If not now, when?
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