Reports Archive

Normally, I sit around before races and shut up. Don’t say much, and just check out the field (unless there’s someone I know, then I chat them up). But not so much before the Williams Crit this past Sunday. I had just pedaled over from my parents’ house (about a mile away), and was chilling…

Ah, Jiminy Peak. The New England spring classic that embodies most of what I hate about road races; wide roads, non-selective climbs, uphill finish, dead-ahead descent. It is, however, extremely pretty. I figured I’d finally do it this year because it passes, for a time, through my hometown. Registration was bliss. It was like someone…

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? I am (or was, as I am writing his like a week later) monstrously out of shape. Not just like bad legs out of shape but all like round in the middle and gross out of shape. Any number of reasons for this, mostly because I ate out…

Guess you could say this was my first race with the big boys. But 1-2-3 field though it may have been, a training race the second week in March is not where anyone’s going to lay down real fireworks. And in my current condition, that’s a good thing. I had figured, with a certain Kephalonian…

March = bike racing. Time was, I’d still be skiing this time of year, but time also was Alaska had glaciers, and Kilimanjaro had snow. So a 6:25 wake-up and a 6:45 departure time (I’m out of practice – a theme for the day) later, I’m on the road to Springfield. Unfortunately, I left the…

This report really begins a few years back, when Steve Weller was converting Amy Wallace’s old Specialized Allez to a campus single-speed (an idea popularized among the Hanoverans by yours truly). I was aghast to see that Steve had shelled out 30 bucks for a singulator (the existing – that is, free – rear derailleur…

Stage 4 – The Burlington Criterium Remember that episode of “The Simpsons”, when Lisa introduces Mr. Burns to recycling? Anyway, he doesn’t know that word, and they have a little literal shot of him going through his internal dictionary, sounding out the word, but not finding it. That was me last weekend, man. “Cry-Tear-Eee-Um?” I…

Stage Three – All Road Races Should be This Road Race So this is the classic New England road race, and apparently served as it’s own event before being integrated into the Green Mountain Stage Race. Two big gaps (Middlebury and Appalachian), a hotly contested points sprint, Roubaix-esq dirt sections, plus a few Amstel Gold-style…

Circuit Race – The Green Mountain Terror This course is kinda dumb. It starts mid-loop, goes up a hill, then downhill for like 20k to a sprint/finish line, then uphill (slowly and rolling until the last little bit) to a KOM (which is near the start). The feed zone is mid-climb which leads to unecessary…

Yes, I realize there have been no race reports since April. That’s because I haven’t raced since then, due a wide variety of factors. But hey, did Valverde need “racing” to come in second at Worlds last year? Nope. So peak performance on no racing should be a piece of cake at something as comparatively…