On Saturday morning, I lined up early in Central Park alongside Matt for my 4th race of the road season (incidentally, all in the park). As I’m on vacation for a few weeks and had slept enough the night before, I felt good lining up the start line.

Background

We had five TBDers out in total. Matt and me in the B field, Alvaro in men’s A, Lucia in Women’s A, and Steph in Women’s Dev. This post will focus on the B field since that’s what this author raced.

Thank you to David Chomowicz and Todd Jones for the photos and for allowing us to share them.

About a week before, CRCA had sent an email letting us know that the cap on the number of riders per team was raised from 9 to 12. By my count, NYCC had just upwards of 10 riders on the start line, so it would be up to them to control the race and set the tempo.

AN UNEXPECTED START

Starting from Cat’s Paw, we were told the race would be neutral to the top of Harlem Hill. There might have been a change of plan or crossing of wires given the confused looks the field exchanged when the moto whistled for us to start racing at the bottom of Harlem Hill.

Mildly confused, the field haphazardly accelerated up Harlem Hill, with some riders deciding they weren’t ready to go as hard as the rest of the field. For me, this mean getting stuck behind riders easing up and needing to surge to get back to the pointy end of the race.

Youth Cycling Network has been posting excellent videos of the early season races. We’re sharing their full race recording.

The BREAKAWAY

It feels like common knowledge that breaks rarely successfully stick in Central Park races. After winning my first ever race (CRCA’s Novice Clinic) last year largely solo / in a 2-3 person break, I wanted to prove to myself that I could join a break that sticks in this race. However, I didn’t envision riding a break for almost the entire race.

As we moved our way through the three sisters on our first lap, a break of about 5 riders went off the front. With the break 5-10 seconds up the road, Andreas, a strong rider I recognized from previous races (and spoiler, this race’s winner) made a move to jump across. I wasn’t perfectly positioned to jump in his draft, but nonetheless I wanted to bridge up to him and in turn the break.

I caught Andreas and he and I connected with the break. There were 5-7 of us and we had maybe a 5 second gap as the field chased. We kept pulling and as I looked back, the field was still close. It’s somewhat of a blur but we shed a couple riders and hammered away until ultimately 3 of us were out of sight of the field.

The three of us in the break were committed and taking hard pulls to increase our gap. Given that Vladimir, one of the NYCC riders was in the break, I felt more confident that the break would stick. We continued hammering and pulling for the rest of the race out of sight of the field.

We couldn’t see them, but Matt told me post-race that the field caught sight of us as we were cresting Harlem Hill on the final lap.

A SPRINT FINISH

About 1-2 miles out from the finish, my heart sunk. Looking back, I saw the pack closing in on us. I called to my breakmates and we put in a hard dig to the finish. We were all fully committed and had spent almost all of our chips on the break. If we got caught we likely wouldn’t have much to offer in a bunch sprint.

As we entered the final straight, we had a 5-10 second gap on the field. We took off with a few hundred meters to go to Engineers Gate. The field did the same in a final attempt to catch us.

The three of us had just enough gas to make it to the line seconds before the field did. I pulled in for third, and was delighted to see that Matt had won the bunch sprint, rolling in for fourth a few seconds behind me.