Rick Newhouse

Today saw the Millworks One Team take on the Rick Newhouse Ninigret crit. Surprisingly, it was warm and sunny at the venue - which resulted in yours truly getting the years first sunburn, summer is coming. Perhaps the cycling weather gods have a sick revenge planned for us? I think so. There has to be a day in the mid 40s of pouring rain coming up. Palmer? Sterling? Which race will it be?

I did the Cat 3 race which started fast and then eased off and stayed 'eased off'. Small field, not too much wind, with some minor accordion effects in the field. No break today - I think by the conclusion of the first ten laps the majority of the field decided that a break wasn't going off so the race kinda mellowed out. Scott was in there with me and got a strong 5th place in the field sprint, I was three places behind to get 8th. I was a bit sketched in the sprint as some guys were doing the side to side thing and taking spots that weren't there in the 'wind up'. Mike and Joe were racing and looking good in the next race, along with Sheldon, Murat and Adam so I think we had a good showing at the races today.

The next race was hard. My legs were a bit tight to start and it started fast - I had two hours to kill before this race started at 1:15 and the other race ended at 11:00. It stayed fast and only got harder as I expected. I was in the third group of six and we were doing about 25/26 mph which wasn't quite fast enough to grab the second group - of six; which got away from us and stayed up about thirty seconds or so most of the race although it was pulling away at the end. The two leaders put about a minute or so on the second group so they must have been going 28mph or so - which would have been super fast for me. I might go out to Myles Standish or to Wells but I might not either. Depends on how I feel. Total today was about 2:10 of race time which is longer than anything I've done so far. My legs are pretty roasted right now which is a good thing for a Saturday in April. I do wonder how the suffer-fest of Battenkill was?