Stephen Pierce has been racing a lot recently- here is a wrap up of the last month or so of racing from his perspective. -ag

I’m not so hot at writing race reports in a timely manner, so here is a quick rundown of my last month-or-so of racing:

1. I ended up in way-up-north NY state to compete in a few races: the Wilmington-Whiteface Road Race & the Saranac Lake Downtown Criterium. I was primarily up there for the road race, as it finished on a long, steep uphill & that sounded pretty good to me. That race shook itself out like this, if I recall correctly: The circuit was a rolling 17 miles or so, with two major climbs & two major descents, punctuated with an exclamation-mark of a two-mile, 11% climb up Whiteface to the finish. Halfway through the race, just after the backbreaker up to the feed zone, I found myself taking part in a four-man break. We killed ourselves to put some distance into the pack before they made it up said backbreaker, and caught my friend Dan Chabanov of CRCA/Adler, who had soloed off to try to catch an earlier break. He joined us, we dropped a guy, and then we caught that earlier break. They joined in our effort to kill ourselves to keep the distance up & we found ourselves with over two minutes on the pack going into the final climb. That’s about where I exploded, and I had to fight to stay conscious. I took sixth, in the money, and Dan won. The next day I wasn’t as fortunate, and bad positioning caused me to miss the break. The rest of the chase group didn’t seem too interested in working with me to chase it down, so I spent the next hour or so sitting in, bored out of my mind going around in circles.

2. Purgatory Road Race. Again with the awesome climbing. They marked elevation 666. There were a few breaks that came back, then a beast went away and didn’t come back. Carving my way through the thick, thick heat, I ended up taking 6th in the field sprint, 7th overall. Not bad.

3. Housatonic Hills. Oops, I slept in (after paying for a hotel room near the race) and didn’t get to the race until 10 minutes before my start. Nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. Put my base layer on backwards. After the KOM sprint on the first lap I was seeing stars & feeling faint. Note for the future: Set more than one alarm.

4. Amgraph Three Village Tour. Kind of a less-exciting circuit, again finishing in a brief but punchy uphill. I worked too much during the race but was still able to pull 9th in the bunch finish.

5. West Hill MTB race. My first ever, a lot of fun. I killed the uphills & flatted & fixed the flat & killed more uphills. This is fun & I will do it more frequently. Congrats to Aumiller for doing this on a singlespeed & ending up on the podium!

6. Fitchburg. Arrrrgggghhhhhhh… OK, so, I’m not so happy with the time-trial-as-third-stage setup, but with my limited stage race experience, who the fuck am I to complain? I feel that it set a super frantic tone for the first two days, the circuit & road race. I did well enough in both of those to be sitting in 11th place in the GC going into the TT, but then royally blew it. I don’t know if I didn’t warm up correctly, if I was fatigued from the previous two days of racing, or if I had been baking under the sun & our team tent for too many hours on end (as we had to get there early for Lily’s TT), but I did not perform nearly as well as I know I’m capable of. I sank very sharply in the GC, then did well in the crit but… Due to the nature of crits, I wasn’t able to make up very much time at all. Altogether, I took 24th in the GC. Not bad, but it kind of stings when you see folks in the top ten who you did better than in every stage but one. Such is the nature of racing bicycles, and I am well aware that one bad day can have a huge impact, especially when that bad day happens to be the day of a time trial. Big-time congrats are in order to B2C2’s Greg Whitney, 3rd overall, and ex-CBer & current Svelte man Nick Mashburn, 6th overall.

7. Today I was fit for my Igleheart CX frame, and I’m reminded to not stress out too much about road disappointments, because cyclocross is just a few pages of the calendar away.

Race Report about Big Ring Rumpus from Aumiller -ag

EFTA #3 Big Ring Rumpus
Race Report by Matt Aumiller

EFTA wasn’t kidding when they named this race. I entered the open single-speed category, and I was a little apprehensive racing with the expert and elite classes at the same time. It was pretty funny registering and talking to the guy next to me in line, then he goes to register and he says, “Oh, my name’s just before this guy…Aumiller. ‘Anthony…first name, Jesse’” Not that he was in my race, but still, NE racing draws pro-pros…(Dan Vaillancourt won that category btw.)