Eastern Bloc Cycling Club

Jeff,

Tim, Pat, Danny, and Jamie’s stories will be much more noteworthy and interesting than mine. While we await their breakdown, he’s my input. The 60+ riders are grouped at the start with the 50+ riders. That’s Pat’s group. I’ve tried riding with Pat before (much less racing) and it never goes well. Also understand there were a couple of National Champions in the 60+ field. Still, 44 miles later and 4400’ of climbing was happy with my time, my second fastest of all the years I’ve done the race. After they sorted the results, I ended up with the CT. State Road Racing Championship for 65-69 year olds.

We need to acknowledge Jeff Cote (and his whole family), Eric, Jamie, Pat, Tim, and Betsy for volunteering to help at the event. (I apologize if I missed anyone). Without volunteers, no race. After my race, Betsy and I work the afternoon shift at the foot of Beach Rock as Course Marshalls. It is a lot of fun to watch others struggle up that hill after you’re done doing it. The two young men she relieved who had done the morning shift were on the Jelly Belly race team.

For the past few years EBCC has won the award for most volunteers, haven’t heard yet if we won it again.

It was nice to see you and other Benidorm folks out there, as well as the Steve and the Andiamo contingent. The shouts of encouragement were much appreciated.

Very well run event. See everyone next year.

Jeff, Here is a recap of the Tokeneke Masters 40+ race. Although I am now 50 years old and glad to have made it this far, I raced the 40+ as my teammates are all younger. The first lap of the race nobody was too anxious to do much work at the front prior to the real climbing on the backside of the course starting at Beach Rock Rd. So a manageable pace on the flat and rolling terrain, but always a hard pace on the climbs. This softens up everyone’s legs for future fireworks. There were 2-3 hard attacks but all were reeled in. I have to say that racing experience has really helped me with these types of races. Essentially you have to know who has the horsepower to break away and stay away. If they go up the road you had better be with them or your hopes for the podium are gone. Now that I have been doing this for a couple of years I know who those guys are for the most part although there seems to be one or two surprises every race. Keeps it interesting and keeps on your toes. There were a handful of racers I had my eye on. The race can go a number of ways but I figured the big attack would happen on lap 2 or 3. Most likely lap 2 on the climb after Beach Rock. And if nobody attacked by then, I was going ;) Sure enough my main target put in the huge attack on the Rte. 181 climb after Beach Rock. Initially, about 10 of us got away on the initial surge. But by the top of the climb only 6 of us survived to stay away. We immediately started working together forming a rotating pace line to ensure our escape. There was still plenty of climbing before the big descent around the end of the reservoir. But we slowly built a nice gap over the chase group and the main peloton. By the time we hit the feed zone at the top of North Hollow climb we had about a 2 minutes advantage on the chasers. This is a 3 lap race covering 66 miles and about 6,600 feet of climbing. So lap 3 is time to dig deep as we started attacking each other on Rte. 181 knowing that we were going to stay clear of the chasers. Nothing would stick as we approached the final climb up North Hollow to the finish line. It is a little over 2 miles of climbing to settle the score. Again, there were 2-3 hard attacks on the final climb. We did manage to shed the winner of the Capital Region Road Race from just weeks earlier. So that was a relief. But there were still 5 of us left going for the line. The decisive attack came with 1k to the line at the top of the steeper climb from Erik Nedeau (MA). I was at the back of our small group so had to follow the chase initially. However with about 400 meters to go I broke out and went full gas for the line. I was able to drop all but one racer whom I towed to the line. I could not quite catch the eventual race winner Erik Nadeau, and was nipped at the line by David Taylor (NY) after towing him in. But that’s bike racing. We finished 5 minutes up on the chasers. A good effort to take 3rd place. First in Connecticut, Second in New England, 3rd overall. Gets a little messy with racers from different states with New England Regional Championship and Connecticut State Championship races simultaneously. My best result in Masters at Tokeneke so pretty pleased with this one.

i agree. Great job Tim ! We are proud of you