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Memorial Day Weekend |
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Written by Andrew Freye
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Saturday, 27 May 2006 |
 For the past couple of years I have been traveling over to Vermont to hit up a classic mountain bike race then traveling back to Southern Maine to hit up a small local road race on Memorial Day. My original plan was to head over to Vermont and race the Coyote Hill short track on Saturday, camp out and then race the Coyote Hill cross country on Sunday. Well after talking with some pro friends it sounded like no one was really going to do the short track so I decided to stay home since I am going to be on the road for the entire month of June.
 There is a saying in New England (ME, NH, VT; the real New England States) “You can’t get there from here.” That saying is ever so true when trying to go east or west from ME to VT. The drive is all back roads, no highways or four lane roads. If you are lucky there might be a truck lane on some of the longer hills allowing you to pass all the southern New Englanders (CT, MA, RI; these states are too populated and are effecting the way of life in the real NE) who come up to drive the back roads and soak in the views. So at any rate I made the journey of multi hour, short distance drive over to VT on Sunday morning.
 The weather actually cooperated this weekend with temps in the upper 70’s and mostly sunny skies. This was a nice change from the cold, wet and rainy races I have done this spring. I was able to get in a nice warm up on the course and was feeling really well. Now I am not the best person with time management and it showed on Sunday. I got to the start a little late and had to line up in the very back of the largest pro field of the season (20 riders, not bad). Despite being so far back I wasn’t too worried because the race started out with a nice long climb before entering some sick single track. Going into the single track I was sitting in 5th and by the end of the single track I was in 4th place right behind the leaders. About 10 minutes into the race I went to go get a drink and my bottle wasn’t there! I guess it fell out when I was going through the single track. Half way through lap one I was in 3rd place and feeling pretty good. I saw the leaders go to get a drink on one of the only open sections and man could I have used something to drink. At this point I started to fade a little bit. Going through the feed zone I was in 4th place and was able to get some high quality H2O.
 Getting dehydrated early on can really affect your performance. I was going through my bottles in the 1st half of the laps and wishing I had more to drink. I started to get the chills but managed to persevere and finish in a solid 3rd place. I wasn’t too far from the winner and I feel pretty confident that if I hadn’t gotten dehydrated to early on I would have had a strong chance of winning the race. After the race teammate John Burns and I went for a spin and found a nice stream to clean up and ice out the legs.
After getting a nice cool down and cleaning up it was time to hop back into the car and head for Southern Maine where I would crash at my friend’s house. When I drove into the driveway Hattie had some burgers on the grill and dinner was ready! Perfect timing on the chef’s part. The great thing about the Memorial Day Classic race is that it’s at 4 in the afternoon giving you the entire day to bum around, or in my case hit up the beaches. Being out the in the sun all morning and eating sandwiches before a race probably isn’t the best pre race activities, but where this is probably the only road race I do all year I wasn’t to concerned.
The road race is not USCF sanctioned so there is only an A and B group. This allows Cat 5’s like myself to race in the A group with some faster dudes. The race was short, only 28 miles on a flat course. The race was just like any other road race. If you tried to set a hard pace people just sat on your wheel and let you do all the work. After putting in a couple hard pulls I decided I would sit in the pack and talk with some fellow cycling friends. In the last mile I had a nice spot towards the front of the pack which is where I wanted to be for a sprint finish. However, some tourists probably from Southern New England driving there huge SUV (that has probably never gone off road) ignored the road race officials and kept on driving towards the pack on a closed road. So as 60 cyclists go flying around a corner we meet the SUV. For the first time that SUV got to go off road’in as it drove off the road and into someone’s grassy lawn (most dirt that SUV is ever going to see). I hope the driver got a flat tire. Anyways this scared the pack and I and I ended up back at the end of the pack. I would finish with the rest of the pack. I am really glad I went and did this road race. The race reminds me of why I don’t road race and how much I love to mountain bike. I guess I just don’t have the mentality to road race, which is ok with me.
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