Hills of Somerset County

Saturday was the Hills of Somerset County road race; an 80-mile jaunt through 14 counties in the heart of New Jersey. It was a very cool race for me; we had a rolling enclosure on open roads, so there was an armada of motorcycles and cop cars in front of the peloton to clear the roads for us. This races is a Pro/1 only race with special invites given to cat 2 teams, and our team got an invite, so we were excited to attend and make something happen!

Unfortunately our two sprinters got caught behind crashes (Keith actually went down, but he's not hurt). Four of our riders made the front group of about 40 people, including me. It became time to pull back the early break and I was feeling good, so I sat on the front for about 4 miles and pulled until we got the break in sight. Around mile 50 though, there was a small crash on a sharp left-hand turn off of a descent, and I tangled my front wheel with someone's rear wheel trying to get around it. Somehow this tore one of front cork brake pads off, so I only had a rear brake for the last 30 miles of the race! All of a sudden I had to go from being aggressive to hold my position, to being very careful on descents and turns so that I wouldn't crash or run off course. I was able to push the pace on the last climb and reduce our front group to about 30, but then in the final corners coming to the finish line, I couldn't hold my position through the turns, so I had to settle for a placing in the 20's and out of the money.

I'm bummed that I couldn't finish higher because I was feeling really good all throughout the race and even afterwards, I just couldn't be aggressive enough in the turns without a front break to hold my position or move up. Overall it was a fun and fast race though.