09 Mar Starting 2013 Off Strong

Blue Ribbon had a strong start to the season in spite of many of our guys having prior commitments keeping them away from the races. We went to Central Park on Saturday with Thomas, Mark and Ira to contest the CRCA master’s race. It’s always hard to predict how the first race will go down since no one has a clue how their fitness might stack up against their fellow racers. With that in mind we knew we had to keep an eye on every move. And there was a lot pay attention to since the attacks started immediately and never let up. On lap 2 of 5 Matt Seaton from Rapha took off solo. We figured that since he was by himself there wasn’t much to worry about. During the next lap the peleton kept coming apart and reforming but finally the elastic snapped and Mark ended up in a chase group of about 10 guys. On the next lap about 4 guys were shed from the group and they were down to six (including a Rapha guy who was sitting on) but they weren’t making time up on Matt who was impressively holding onto a 40sec. lead. On the final lap the chase group played too much cat and mouse to catch Matt and Mark ended up out sprinting his break companions for 2nd place. Not a bad start to the season.

On Sunday Zach Koop and Mike Zak did the spring series race in CP. A break of 4 guys got away early on and were never caught. Zach not content to sit in the field got away with our friend Gavi Epstein with 2 laps to go. The 2 of them chased very hard for 2 laps but couldn’t catch the break but they were also going fast enough that they stayed away from the field. Gavi ended up taking 5th and Zach 6th.