William and Mary Road Race Report, 2006
by Cliff Smoot

Men’s C
Ryan “terMite” terMeulen – 17th
Ryan Bloom(er) – 3rd
Jonathon “Smitty” Smits – dnf

Men’s B
Toby Weatherall – 9th
Nathan Coleman – 2nd
Brian Cohee - dnf
Cliff Smoot - dnf

Women’s B
Jess Chin – 7th
Lauren Singer – 10th
Priscilla “Pmok” Mok – 6th

Women’s A
Katie Ross - dnf

We all had some big hopes for this race, the very first of our season. It was a new c ourse for the conference, and featured a dangerous-sounding climb called the “Col du Carwash.” Despite all our optimism and excitement, the course actually turned out to be quite a disappointment. While bad organization was one issue (late registration, subpar marshalling, inadequate portapots, etc.), the course itself was a real waste of legs: potholes, gravel, a blind finish, and practically zero climbing. The “carwash” barely qualified as a roller, and turned out to be a joke being played on us by the promoters.

Men’s C stayed pretty well together the whole race, with a few sad crashes (notably, our own Smitty, taken out by some squirrel who got stuck in a pothole on the very first lap) and dropped riders. The pack itself took few risks, mostly staying at a very slow Sunday ride pace, since everyone was against the idea of sitting on the front. Termite and Bloomer finished up with a strong 8th and 3rd (respectively), doing really well despite the mediocre finish of the course – as mentioned, the final .9 mi of the course was on a tangent into a public park, with the finish line beyond a blind corner and missing even the obligatory “200 meters left signs,” etc.

The Men’s B race started at the same blistering 12 mph pace as the Men’s Cs. As far as I could tell, the craze of this race was to yell “slowing” with every change of the course. The slightest ascent, curve, or irregularity in road surface would cause the whole pack to slow to a piddle. This was only annoying in the beginning, but became truly painful when all this sketchy handling crashed out our own ironman, Brian Cohee. Ultimately, it was the final lap and the last 2k’s formidable headwind section that became the only interesting element of the race. For me, the “interesting” part was getting taken down by a pileup that opened up four feet ahead of me. For Nathan, it was breaking away with a few other stir-crazy riders and stringing out the field in the process. Toby did his damndest to block for Nathan’s break and bought his teammate some valuable time. Like many other racers that day, Toby didn’t know the sprint was upon him until turning a corner and seeing the finish line magically appear fifty feet away…yet he still managed to pull off 9th place. While Nathan’s break got caught well before the end, he was able to hold the right position and finish up in the mini-sprint for a very impressive 2nd place.

The Women’s B race started off extremely slowly with very little movement within the pack and a quick breakaway at the end. The pack stuck together with a few attempted breakaways. However, because the course was relatively flat, the pack was able to catch anyone who tried to breakaway until the last 5 miles. Jess, Priscilla and Lauren sat at the back of the pack for the entire race, finding it very difficult to move up without making some dangerous maneuvers. This was Lauren and Priscilla’s first collegiate road race, so they were very hesitant to stay at the back. However, patience paid off. When the front eight girls attacked with 5 miles left to go, Lauren, Jess and Priscilla were able to form a chase group and passed 3 of them in the turn towards the uphill finish. A lesson learned in road racing: the girl who pulled at the front of the pack for most of the race ended up in 5th place, whereas Priscilla, Jess and Lauren took 6th, 7th and 10th right behind her.

Our veteran in Women’s A, Katie Ross, faced a difficult situation. On the very first lap, a course marshal sent her along with two Men’s B riders down the wrong street. Try as she might, her furious legs could not bridge the resulting fifteen minute gap between her and the rest of the field…a very tough break for her indeed.

As a team, the highlight of the day was probably having each racer on top of his or her game from the very start of the race. Despite the usual uncertainty, stress, and panic of the first season’s race, we had everyone well taken care of. We all got a decent breakfast, had a solid warmup (on the club’s new fleet of mag trainers), and were at the starting line on time and ready to go, starting the season with on very solid footing. Not only has our team expanded this year and taken on many first-year racers, but we’ve already had more top ten finishes in this single race than we did in any whole race weekend of last season.