The whole team is on a good note after the first two races of the season.
The first weekend was held at Bucknell in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Derek, Seamus and Guillaume competed in the first race of the season (men’s TTT) in horrible rain, but fought their way to 2nd place in the men’s B/C peloton. Weather and morale improved by road races later in the day. The infamous “Sunrise Climb” combined with 20 mph winds destroyed (literally and figuratively) Hannah’s Women’s A/B Race and the Men’s B/C Race. Seamus, Guillaume and Hannah all hung on to varying degrees to finish their races in the middle of the pack, while Derek hit a hidden piece of gravel and had an unfortunate slide which took him out of the race.
Coming back the next day with watts that can only be generated by the need for revenge, Derek found himself in a two-man break during the critique. The break eventually became three and Derek came away with a solid 3rd place that day. Hannah finished 2nd in her review after also breaking and riding through the (albeit very small) field. Being the first race of the season and a small group and mostly racing at the same time meant we weren’t used to taking photos and didn’t have any majestic shots to show for the weekend. Luckily, Aaron fixed this problem for us for Weekend 2 at the University of RI, so keep scrolling for those!
Eleven of us made the trip to southern RI for URI’s second race weekend of the year. This was the first road race with MIT for more than half of the crew. Nothing says ECCC season better than waking up at 5:30pm and watching the sunrise, but at least for this weekend we started our day with beautiful Misquamicut Beach.
The first race of the day allowed us to take out the MIT TT helmets (we remain the only ECCC team to race with them, #science). Early in the day there was some confusion over the ITT course, leading to the results being canceled for the entire men’s C/D peloton. But official results are not necessary because the riders followed the correct course, Félix and William finished 1-2 in the C/D Men peloton so we gained in spirit. Meanwhile, Josh and Derek did the same for the men’s B/C peloton with times a full minute faster than anyone else in their peloton and the 5th and 6th fastest times of the day. This placed them just behind 4 riders who were all part of the 1st or 2nd place team time trial teams at last year’s Collegiate Nationals.
And then our weekend of escapes begins. Being on the beach meant views, but also wind. The road race course was an extended 8 mile dog bone loop parallel to the shore for about 6 miles. What started as a side wind turned into a headwind/tailwind for the final races of the day, making the finish line exceptionally fast and causing splits throughout the pelotons. Andrew, Vinh, Aaron, Seamus and Felix raced in the men’s C/D peloton consisting of over 70 starters (!!). Through excellent team tactics and road steering by Seamus, they were able to send Felix ahead in the final 2 miles of the race. He took a 20-second lead over the peloton in his very first road race.
Hannah was also hard at work in the women’s A/B peloton with a 2-woman break that finished almost 7 minutes ahead of the rest of the peloton. After working together for the entire race, Hannah took second place behind the UVM driver with the hope that one day more riders in the field will have an A license and be eligible to join the nationals at the end of the season.
More team tactics came into play for the men’s B/C race where Derek, William and Josh worked together to ensure Josh came away with a 2nd place finish. Meanwhile, Mason and Lee were on their way to the men’s A race at the same time. After a brief slowdown to see the B finishers arriving as their peloton passed, the pace picked up again. There was a USAC runner in front, but they still came away with 4th and 5th places in the collegiate rankings during the bunch sprint.
After a night spent watching the Paris Roubaix Femmes together at the hotel, it was Crit Day on everyone’s favorite Southern RI course: Ninigret! The day ended with sideline meetings made possible by another new member of the MIT team, Adam. He was the MVP of the day for coming down to respect us, encourage us, and most importantly, feed us breakfast burritos throughout the day.
Before the C/D Men’s race, we asked William, Seamus and Felix what their plan was for managing such a large field. Their response: “make it smaller.” Indeed, in less than 2 laps, all three of them took a breakaway in front. They traveled together to the finish as planned. ECCC’s conference director made a rare appearance on the microphone mid-race to joke that we “spent too much time in the wind tunnel.” This is not entirely true as no one from the team was present the last time the Club entered the wind tunnel. That said, we wouldn’t be opposed to trying it if someone has a connection for us these days! There is always room for improvement, even when you are behind.
After setting the trend in the first race of the day, Derek and Josh couldn’t resist the temptation to take a breakaway in their men’s B/C race as well. Changing the order from the previous day’s ITT, Derek took second and Josh took third out of a four-man field. Aaron followed that up with a win in the men’s introductory race by pulling away from a group of 3 as Vinh controlled the pace in the main group behind. Andrew had an unfortunate encounter with a bush on the sidelines early in the race, but recovered for a respectable 12th place in the group.
The day’s Men’s A and Women’s A/B races remained fun but success was more elusive. Hannah was injured on the line during the final sprint (she repeated almost every race in last year’s ECCC season…). However, with top-notch sprint points, Hannah will still be wearing yellow numbers next week as the series leader in Field A for the season so far. A sharp break occurred at the start of the men’s A race and despite a valiant chase effort from Lee and coach Robbie (riding in his USAC team colors for Community Bike Racing), they were unsuccessful. to fill. After a lead from Mason, Lee took 3rd place in the field sprint.
Overall, the team is motivated. We missed the team’s omnium victory this weekend by just one point. But we will come back next week for revenge! I finish with some thoughts from Vinh on his first weekend of road racing with the team:
“These first road races were phenomenal! I had so much fun drawing behind people and keeping up with them. I think I did better on the second day because of the experience I gained after being let down hard on the first day. I’m happy that me being boring in the peloton helped Aaron pull a big gap in the breakout and win the race!! Still, I have a lot to improve in terms of power and sprinting. Very excited! Being with the team was also a lot of fun, cheering, getting cheered and learning from everyone was awesome!! 10 out of 10 would do it again!
Next up is our home race, co-hosted with UMass Amherst. Will MIT’s new stars shine as we head for the hills of Western Mass? Stay tuned to find out!
Photo credits: mainly @aaron_v_photography, with extras from Seamus, Hannah, Felix and a stranger in the parking lot who was kind enough to take our group photo