Steven Boyd's Navy Race Report

This weekend was an interesting one for me. Having upgraded to C’s from D’s, I encountered larger fields, better riders, and more team tactics. The crit on Saturday started at a blistering pace and I was a little concerned that I had gotten in over my head. Eventually people began to drop off the pace and things settled into a rhythm. I found myself up front with a group of 10 or so riders but the prime laps increased the pace and reduced it to about 6. At this point I wasn’t doing much more than holding on for dear life to the lead pack which was being led by 2 riders from Navy and 2 from Virginia Tech. Ultimately the last turn (downhill, off-camber, and extremely sharp) proved to be too technical for me and I exited it in 5th place on the last lap but simply did not have enough speed coming out of the turn to catch anyone in the sprint. The time trial was frustrating because my computer stopped working almost as soon as I took off and although I tried to catch the rider 30 seconds in front of me, I found it hard to push myself hard enough without any idea of how much of the 5k had already elapsed. The road race was a similar story. An early attack by a lone Navy rider led to a peloton that was frustrated by a large group of Navy riders who did a great job of blocking and covering attacks. The group was able to hold him at a 35 second gap for about half of the race. Ultimately a group of riders from VT, Duke, and GW were able to work together to pull in the solo break but the early effort left me with little energy for the final climb to the finish and I finished near the back of the riders remaining in the field, having fought for most of the last lap just to stay with the group.