Category 3,4: 9 miles

Presented by:
Metropolitan Cycling Association | Team Squiggle

Palisades Interstate Park, NJ

Confirmed Riders (not including day-of registration):
http://www.bikereg.com/events/ConfList.asp?EventID=7721

‘Arches Riders:
- Aaron Deutsch

Race Summary: Event met, but did not exceed, expectations. Weather was great and there was a mix of people with standard road racing bikes as well as Time Trial bikes. Only a few guys with the teardrop-shaped helmets who would have won the day without the tech from the looks of their build and finishing times. Most just had clip-on aero bars.

The course started with a very steep downhill and ran up river road about 5 miles before doubling back (making for a delicious small-ring finish for most)

I was glad to have the aero bars in the middle section of the course as the extra speed helped to make it over the rollers at a nice pace. The hills were steep enough to require standing at times and I probably felt the full-leg lactic burn at least 4 times in the 24 minutes I was out there.

Riders were sent out in 1 minute intervals and overall it was very organized. I conceded about a minute twenty to a DKNY rider with a cervello TT bike and ended up finishing mid-pack both for Cat 4 as well as overall if you blended the fields together. Having only owned aero bars for 4 days before racing on them and not having had a chance to do much specific training for the event I feel pretty good about the results, and about the improvements that can be made before the next event of this type.

Category 3,4: 10 laps

Presented by:
Metropolitan Cycling Association | Team Squiggle

Prospect Park
Brooklyn, NY
Course Map at prospectpark.org

Confirmed Riders (not including day-of registration):
http://www.bikereg.com/events/ConfList.asp?EventID=7722

‘Arches Riders:
- Aaron Deutsch

Race Summary: The start was just how we like it: sun was already rising, temp was crawling into the mid-70s, and we probably had 75 starters in the 3/4 field.

Pace was good, 27.5 for the first two laps, dipping down slightly to 25.5 at the end of the 11 laps.

Spent the first few laps yo-yoing between the middle and the back of the pack (and this wasn’t due to soft pedaling, this was due to picking the wrong “current” of riders that kept getting sucked backwards towards the abyss). The accordion effect got a little annoying after a few laps; the pack would slow at the bottom of the hill, then accelerate quickly. By the time the acceleration made it towards the back of the pack you had to hold on tight and ride 30+ mph all across the bottom of the park to reconnect. After a few of these I moved up a dozen places at a time on the hill until I was riding top 20. In talking to some after the race this eventually took a tole on a handful of riders who cracked and dropped out half way through.

About 3/4 through the race we started to mix up with the masters group which is when everything started to unravel. Each group seemed to neutralize well for the other but we kept passing each other which threw off the rhythm of the race.

This, combined with more pedestrians due to the longer race bleeding later into the morning culminated in a disastrous finish. With about 1500 meters to go the overall speed was accelerating but the real setups for the sprint had not yet begun. I was running about 15th and feeling good knowing that about half of these guys would peel off and we’d have a good chance of placing.

This is around the point where we overtook the masters again, meaning we had only one usable lane for a bunch of impatient, squirly Cat 3/4s. From what I understand, one of the masters veered left and laid two guys in the front out on the road. I managed to swerve a tight path around them but a few guys behind me went wide into the jogger lane. One of them leveled a jogger who’s sunglasses almost hit me in the face.

From that point most of us just soft pedaled to the finish and called it a day, glad to be upright.