The Skidmore Cycling Team had another fantastic weekend at the annual Boston Beanpot Race.  The weekend started out on Saturday in Grafton, MA with an early morning, rain soaked team time trial.  Skidmore represented a 4 man B TTT with Andrew, Travis, Scott, and Tom.  The Four man group worked together smoothly through the technical course to finish 4th overall.

Later on Saturday the team competed in the infamous Beanpot Road Race, featuring over 1,000 feet of climbing per lap.  Fortunately the rain let up for the afternoon road races, however the temperature hovered around 45 degrees and the skies were cloud covered.  Because the attendance of the Race was so high (480 racers in all), and each lap so long (13 miles), four packs were racing on the road at once.  Skidmore had riders in each pack, including the Men’s A, B and C categories and Women’s A.

The Men’s C riders had a superb race.  With Ricky controlling things at the front of the 100 man field for the first two laps, he enabled his teammates to relax in the pack so they would be fresh for their finish.  Unfortunately a crash on the second lap forced Ricky and Mike to abandon the race, luckily neither we hurt.  Thad, Travis, and Jeff continued onward to the finish of the 45 mile race.  The three waited patiently, and on the final climb they each hit it as hard as they can.  Thad rocketed up the climb finishing an astonishing fourth place with Travis and Jeff not far behind at 22nd and 40th place respectively.

The Men’s B team had a bold race.  Andrew attacked on the second lap, gaining 45 seconds on the field with two other rides.  The three were eventually caught, and the effort was too much for Andrew as he was unable to rejoin the pack.  Scott and Tom raced hard, but were both involved in crashes and were unable to finish the 58 mile race.
In the women’s A race, Anna held her own as the lone female rider from Skidmore.  In the grueling 58 mile, Anna remained calm, knowing that climbing is her forte, she waited for the finishing climb, and was able to snag 5th place overall out of the pack of 40.

The final event on the road for the Day was the Men’s A race.  The pack would race 72 miles and climb over 5000 feet.  Twenty miles into the race a seven man break started, gaining over 2 minutes on the pack.  However as the miles went by and the riders became fatigued, the pack disintegrated into a mere 2 man break.  With less than 5 miles left the 2 man break had a 40 seconds gap, and with 1 mile to go they still had 20 seconds.  On the final climb the pack was able to close the gap to the 2 man break, but only enough to watch them take first and second.  Dave Brown finished 7th overall.

The next morning Skidmore supported Jeff Narva, its only participant in the Tufts Crit (The team decided not to do the race because it is so dangerous; however Jeff’s parents came from Texas to watch him so he raced).  As we chanted for Narva on the sidelines, his race shot off at a phenomenal speed.  Narva flew around the course with the pack for about 10 laps, but as the pack disintegrated, Narva was caught behind and forced to retire early.
All in all it was a great weekend.  Photos will be coming soon.

Some Fun Facts:
-Skidmore ranked 6th out of 41 teams in the cumulative team road race results
-The huge number of fans we had this weekend, including Adam, Stephen, Lindsay, Lindsay's sister, Mr. and Ms. Narva, Mr. Cole, and Thad's parents.
-We watched the Fugitive 5 times on TV (turns out the one armed man did do it!)
-Steven had the best Pizza of his life
-We met a very nice Hostess at Bertucci’s
-We walked Harvard’s campus in Cambridge, only to discover that the Harvard kids are anti-social and don’t say hello back when you say hello to them
-We broke land speed records from Boston to Saratoga (2 hours 20 minutes)

Thanks for the Support!