W&M TT + Sketchy Sketchy W&M RR Crashfest

Two weekends ago the team commenced spring break by heading east to Williamsburg. The team took personal vehicles since everyone was headed separate directions after a weekend of racing at William & Mary. We got a fairly late start leaving around 4:45 and immediately hitting an accident on I-81N that added an additional hour to our already very long drive. A quick stop in Charlottesville for Chipotle, the best race food known to mankind, and back on the road finally arriving around 10:30 at our host house.

My car loaded up for a weekend of racing and home.

I didn't get a very good nights sleep Friday evening, partly due to a cat that decided my head was the perfect place to sleep, but I can't blame my poor performance on Saturday on the cat. I've come to the conclusion that time trialing is my weakness, which is great because that means I know where to improve, the bad part is I have A LOT of room for improvement. Saturday I finished DEAD LAST in my heat.

I don't even want to talk about what first place got for a time. Let's just say it was 30:?? Full Results.

I felt like I put a good effort in but know that it wasn't constant. Below is the Power Data for Saturdays TT:

Power Data with my pyramid warm-up, my TT in the middle, and cool down back to the start.

Only the TT data.

After the TT the team relaxed and enjoyed the gorgeous weather and food the Aber's provided, we're really getting spoiled with them traveling with us every weekend.

Jacob's family was nice enough to bring the team lunch, delicious pulled pork.

I decided to head to Richmond for the night and spend time with my family. My new race food of choice is meatball subs because apparently two of those and I was good to go for Sunday. I also got a great nights sleep, about 10 hours which I believe helped as well. Sunday morning I headed back to Richmond for the RR which was being held at KOA (Kampground of America) Williamsburg. Michelle made the drive to see me which was additional incentive to ride well for the day.

The road race was three-laps of sketchy-sketchy mayham and carnage, Period. The field was one of the larger fields this year with 46 Mens C riders STARTING the race, **note starting**. The first lap was fairly casual except for a fairly unusual move by a Johns Hopkins rider who chased down his own teammate who had a decent gap on a break. Two events to note during the first lap were a rider getting a flat directly infront of me and me letting him know so that he didn't wipe out half the field another rider getting a flat and taking out half of the field. The second lap was pretty calm with a few more riders flatting and the field splintered from the first crash. At the end of the third lap right before the finish I was sitting top 10 in the field when the lead vehicle opened up both lanes as we crossed a bridge right before the final uphill. This....this is where everything went wrong, the Mens C field has caught the womens field and they had been neutralized taking one lane at the bottom of the hill, this is after we had gone two lanes wide and were doing around 30MPH. The field had to quickly react and bottlenecked back to one lane trying to work around the womens field. This is where the crashing began, I kicked it and never looked back, two crashed to left of me, another to the right I saw only 3 riders ahead of me as I went over the line. Turns out another guy got me at the line but a 5th place finish and managing to keep the rubber side down was a success in my book.

I was very excited until I had learned that of the four riders from VT in the Mens C field I was the only rider unscathed from the crashfestival that unfolded. I was lucky, my friend Andy Reagan was not. He unfortunately folded his bars nearly in half and suffered abrasions on the shoulder and legs, but thankfully only abrasions and not broken bones.

Road Race power file, the giant spike at the end is the uphill sprint finish.

My first top 5 finish, 5th of 46 overall. Results Here.

During the crashfest uphill final sprint my wheel got hit pretty good and I had to take my bike into the shop to get it trued. Spring break update to come...

A recap of the weekend by Reid Beloni on VeloNews Here.