Cherry Blossom Classic, Newark

Cat 4 womens race.

Andrea and Alison left Manhattan and helped put on a good show out in New Jersey. Cheered on by baby Benjamin, Andrea took sixth in a field sprint finish with Alison right behind her in 11th.

Nice riding given the iffy weather and an all-too-typical sketchy W4 field.

Battenkill Roubaix

Nan took 10th.

Yay!

No one else was at all inclined to go climb big hills in the dirt. We're funny that way.

Early morning practice

Nancy

What this doesn't show you is Nancy actually going through a myriad of ridiculous moves in an effort to stretch a new tire out before practice last week. 6am, there's Nancy full of vim and vigor, doing her darndest to put on her new tire before practice.

Despite best efforts though, we took off without her and she had to finish booting her old tire alone. Teams can be harsh...

And actually, now that I look at this picture? It doesn't show you much at all—Nan is the blurry one in the middle (all that energy, y'know), Maggie is sitting on the ground. Clearly I need to practice using the crappy camera phone a bit more...

Team Cup #1

All hands on deck for the start of Team Cup racing in the park.

A lot of attacks that went nowhere, all ending up in a field sprint after the field split on the last Harlem Hill. Mags came around Sarah for second; Nan took 5th for our second placing. Based on the preliminary results, we'll be sitting second in the standings—Comedy took at least 4 of the 8 spots that count, and the field break meant several teams had only one rider remaining for the sprint.

A good race for the team though—we put in some really good efforts and showed some excellent teamwork.

Grant's Tomb women 3.18.06

Our first chance to unveil our secret weapon—the Maginator.

25', windy on the back side, about 25 women on the line for a 45 minute crit around Grant's Tomb. I love this race for pretty much no good reason as I've never had a very good finish here. But I like the little hump of a hill, it's good fun.

Maggie & I were the only two TBW riders in the field, but CC and Advil were out in force. We decided to sit in and see how things went for the first half, a slightly rotten theory that showed its flaws when Anna Milkowski (in town for the collegiate race) took off around the second lap with Caryl Gale of CC and Emma (now with Advil) in tow and we were nowhere near the front. A flurry of people tried unsucessfully to bridge right off the bat, but things had settled for a moment when Betty Tyrell flew up the right side of the road. Maggie roared after her, and the two of them got within a few seconds of the leaders. They weren't able to close the gap though, and ended up in no-man's land for the rest of the race, just barely in sight of the pack which never really forgot they were out there.

Anna eventually dropped Emma and then Caryl, to take the win*. Maggie outsprinted Betty for 4th, and I straggled in somewhere around 13th. 17th. 92nd. Something like that... But it was still excellent fun and a nice start to women's racing in New York.

See loads of pictures of Maggie (and everyone else, but not really me) at nyvelocity.com. (Thanks, Andy!)

* Anna then continued her day with 2nd in the Collegate Women's A race and a pack finish with the Collegate Men's A's. Nice riding.