It's spring? When did that happen?

As you can tell by looking out the window, spring has finally arrived. It only took a month of biblical rain and flooding that was March for it to arrive. This past weekend, saw some excellent racing weather where yours truly finally raced with no extra layers. This weeks, forecast is looking just as good with nothing but sunshine for the foreseeable future. This past weekend, me and my teammate Nick raced in the Prospect park spring series in the 3/4 race, this would be my last chance to get a tune up race in before the Cup Series at the end of the month.

The race went relatively well, me and Nick stayed in the top 20 most of the race. I tried to get in a break early but it went no where. With 3 laps to go I hear I nice loud pop, yup my my rear flatted so there goes my race. I was disappointed w/ flatting out, but at least I got in a workout and was able to mix it up w/ some higher* cat guys. Nick finished in the field, in what he felt was a pretty good race.

Being easter weekend, everyone at Stevens bagged the races at Bucknell for what I am going to assume was something church related, but I digress. Last week, Stevens co-hosted the Princeton/Stevens race. All in all, it was a good race with little complaints. Both teams interacted well to put on a good race.

I leave you with some videos of this yesterday central park sprints, unfortunately I was in church yesterday and could not participate :(

http://nyvelocity.com/content/gallery/race-photos/2010/spring-series-4410-videos-0

Race schedule slowly coming together

After much waiting, the venerable Charlie Issendorf has finally released the title Sponsor for 2010 Prospect Park Series. For the past two years, Cadence Multisport has been the title sponsor for this racing series. This year Lucarelli & Castaldi will be the new title sponsor for 2010. Prospect Park racing has been the meat of my season for the last two years, and this year will be no different. Typically Prospect Park always has a races going Saturdays and Sundays, but it is always the "Cup Series" that draws the biggest, nastiest, hairiest fields.

It is in these races at Prospect that I have learned the most. This season I hope to go from the dark horse in the race to a marked man. Most of my races there last season, I was always a dark horse during the race with no one paying attention to anything I did. If I were a breakaway rider, that would be awesome...unfortunately that is not the case. No teamates = no leadout = not a good sprint position. Luckily I have several new teammates at Montclair and Stevens so I should have plenty of help this season, and with a little luck and planning I should be able to take a few sprints this season at one of my all time favorite venues.

As far as USAC and ECCC races; most of schedule is set. Unfortunately I won't be able to do all the ECCC races this season thanks to a heavy senior workload. Its bitter sweet, as this will be my last year racing in college. But such is life....
Less ECCC races means more NJ racing, which is great for me as it means less driving and not having to be up crazy early to get to races on time.

There has been lots going on at Stevens, especially since we are once again hosting our own race and co-hosting a race weekend with Princeton. Flyers for both will be out shortly, so keep your eyes open for those.

Updates and other ramblings

So, its been a while since my last post. The last post was about my prep for the State TT, well sadly I was unable to attend due to a family situation that arose the night before. Nonetheless my teammates at Montclair represented well with two riders taking wins in their respective age groups. For June I was scheduled to race a few times at the watermelon crit and prospect park. That did not happen either due to not getting paid at work for a month, so instead I focused my efforts on my training. I basically spent the entire month of June training with my teammates most days of the week. The majority of the guys on my team are masters 35+ and higher, with our coach being a 45+ racer. The benefit of this is that our Tuesday night training race turns into a balls to the wall hammerfest and our Saturday ride into a 15mile free for all. In one month I figured why my collegiate season this year went less than stellar: lack of discipline in training(school work and beer are blame). As a cat.4 my teammates expect a little more from me than most of new members, so naturally I was to improve my fitness and race awareness during my training.

Now that July is here, I finally got paid which I can race again. My first race back was last Saturday at Prospect Park. The turn out was pretty good, with almost 20 additional racers showing up the day of for the cat.4 field. The race wasn't superfast, but their was a breakaway attempt on everylap. This made for constant speed changes on a course that can take its toll after 8 laps of racing. I got myself into the last breakaway, as their was about a lap and half to go. They were already out there for a lap and had a 30second gap on the field. I figured if this was going to be the one to stick, I better try to get into it. I bridged the gap to breakaway, but it seems that move caused a panick or something in the pack as we got caught on the last lap at the top of the hill. I burned a big match to bridge the breakaway, and didn't have much gas to sprint in the end. A few riders at the end of the race told me if had used that effort to bridge the breakaway in the sprint I would have had top 5, but oh well that;s bike racing.

Next on tap for me is the Giro del Cielo in sussex county, I can't climb as well I used to but at the least it will help my fitness for the remaining races on my schedule.