In the crit. Credit to Jan Valerie Polk

We woke up early (too early, read Anna’s report), to a rainy day in the ice cream and pizza capital of the world (Rhode Island).  Interesting fact that I just made up:  Rhode Island has more ice cream and pizza joints than people.  Anyway, most of us sat in the van/went to Starbucks before our Rhode Race (puns!) in the early afternoon.

Sydney and I raced the Men’s A race over a 20-something mile loop with some dirt roads and lots of well behaved dogs who only cared to watch the races from the comfort of their lawn.  Dylan didn’t feel like getting beat by a bunch of kids who have never taken an algebra class 2 days in a row so he left his bike at the hotel, but more about that later.  The race was pretty slow for the first two laps, and a few guys jumped off the front right as the racing started.  We never saw them again.

After 2 laps of the course and going into our final lap, a KMS kid attacked through the feed zone.  All I could concentrate on was how much his Trek Domane looked like it was going to fall apart because the seatstays weren’t connected (the brake is under the bottom bracket, so no need for a tube between the seatstays to hold a brake).  I thought a few of us were going to get up the road at this point, but alas, no such luck.  On the first dirt road section, 7 (who knew?) guys got off the front of our peloton.  The pace stayed slow until about 8 miles (America!) from the finish.

Sydney wanted to catch the guys up front, but I had no desire to put effort in working for the rest of the group, especially with the number of guys who had teammates up the road and wouldn’t contribute.  We opted for a more exciting strategy.  Sydney attacked off the front, and it was immediately chased down by KMS.  As soon as he got back I flew off the front, and KMS didn’t want to let this one go either.  This happened 3-5 more times, and each time the same KMS kid chased it down, jerk.  After this flurry no one else really tried to get off the front and the pace slowed waaaayyy down in the final 5K (3.1 miles for all you Americans like me reading along).  I had a conversation with a Garmin Craddock kid about 2K from the finish if that’s any indication as to the pace.  Once the final turn was in sight, people started amping it up.  The finish was an uphill sprint and as such I passed all but 2 guys on the way up to the line, finishing 3rd in the field sprint.  The KMS kid that chased down all of the attacks won it, by the way.  After not being able to find the van for 25 minutes, I finally did and we were on our way to the hotel.

Downtown crits are the best crits.  As there were still copious amounts of time to kill, Dylan and I headed to a nearby Starbucks to catch Liege-Bastogne-Liege before the race (Dylan decided he wanted to bring his bike back to NYC with him, so he brought it with us this time).  The crit started at about 12:40, super early for an ECCC Men’s A race, but this was fine as we’d get home much earlier.  I don’t think I mentioned this before, but I like racing much better when KMS isn’t there.  They steal my points and they can’t even go to nationals, and like I said before, can’t solve the equation 2x=6.  That said, they played an awesome race tactically, with Brendan off the front for most of the race and Ansel  controlling the field and not allowing a chase for quite some time.  We finally caught the break with about 7 to go and the pace picked up through the end of the race.  I loved this course for the ease of moving up through the somewhat technical turns.  On the last lap, I was well positioned in the top 10 and Dylan was right in front of me.  I held my position the whole way around and came out of the sprint as hard as I could into a headwind.  I ended up 11th after a hard race and Dylan ended up 3rd surrounded by 3 KMS.  But because Dylan is capable of driving a car legally, we all agreed that he’s the real winner.  Here’s a picture of our awesome new kits on the podium:

Dylan getting beat by 2 guys who have never been to a high school prom. Courtesy of RISD.

All kidding aside (puns!), the KMS guys are great and super fast and I’m probably just jealous that I wasn’t that fast in high school.  Great weekend, thanks Brown/RISD!