Brinkerhoff #2 Race Report:
Steve Romero and I headed down for the early season fitness check that is the Trooper Brinkerhoff Memorial race series. The forecast was for rain overnight, but ending at 5 or 6am, giving the roads time to dry out in the wind that inevitably blows down there in Coxsackie. Expected highs in the seventies made it too enticing to pass up.
The roads were wet and covered with worms drinking up the steamy air during our preride lap. By the 11am start the puddles were all gone. The road conditions, pothole-wise, were in better shape than I’ve seen them.
The registration numbers were good, with 57 in the A field and about 50 in the C field. I chose to race with the A’s pretending not to notice that I’m old enough to drop down into the B’s. Steve wound up in the “crashiest” field (C) on the day, and even got jostled during the big pileup heading south on rte 385, but he managed to stay upright. One rider slid out in the A field around the low speed turn onto Farms to Market Rd, but it looked like a pretty soft landing. The tone felt pretty mellow otherwise.
There were breaks in the A field the whole race, but they never got more than 30-40 seconds up the road, and were mostly fewer than four riders. The pack was attentive all day with very little blocking going on in protection of the breaks.
I tried to chase two or three moves early, but they all got pulled back immediately. I’m no sprinter, but I realized that my legs couldn’t chase many more moves without risk of shooting out the back, so I sat in and hid in the main field all the way to the finish. Congrats to Connor Sallee on the win.
Steve finished with the main field in the C’s. There was a successful break of three in the C field and Rob Murray took the win. With no NAVers in the B’s or D’s your guess is as good as mine.
This C field video was posted with the results on bikereg. Thanks to Jon O'Keeffe (snapshot from the video serving as the photo with this report).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImCJUJfyHbQ
Zack