Fitchburg Longsjo classic 2009: Stages 1, 2, and 3

Last Sunday was the end of the July 2nd to 5th Fitchburg Longsjo classic. For those of you who have never heard of it, it is a very big 4 day race in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. All of the fields there were extremely talented, but none more than the 70 person 15-18 pack which included all of the Hot tubes team (Nathan Brown, Lawson Craddock, Gavin Mannion, Anders Newbury, Ian Boswell, and Ben Gabardi), Luke Keough, Juan Carmona, Nathaniel Wilson, Charlie Avis, and AJ Meyer. Since the field was so strong, I didn't know how I'd do in the race but thought I could do pretty good in Saturdays hilly road race.

Day one: TT

Thursday was the 1st day of the race, an out-and-back, pretty flat long 14 Kilometer TT. The course didn't suit me very well, but I was expecting to get about 30th.

I rode up to the starting ramp and waited to go off. I sprinted down the course with the wind, and though I was going pretty fast. I got to the turn around feeling good, and powered back to get a time of under 22 minutes ( 24.7 mph), which I thought was pretty good. But when I saw the results a couple of hours later, I was surprised that I got 49th, out of 67. My average speed wasn't bad for me, but there were just so many good people there. Nathan Brown won in a time of 18:25, averaging over 29 miles per hour!

Stage two: circuit race

Friday was the circuit race, 22 miles on a 3.1 mile course. Even after the day before I was looking forward to this stage because it had a steep climb 1/5th of a mile long as well as a smaller, more gradual hill.

I lined up for the race in the 2nd row, but fell back alot at the start because I couldn't clip in. We quickly accelerated to 32 mph, and went over 25 on the smaller climb. After that there was a slight downhill were we got up to more than 35, then a pretty narrow corner followed by the hill.

We sprinted up the first 2/3rds of the incline, past the finish line, and up the rest of it to the start line, then repeated it 6 more times. Throughout this a lot of riders got dropped and I had to bridge a lot of gaps. The final time up the hill I started it in about 25th, moved up to almost 2oth halfway up, then faded a little to 27th on the last bit after 45 minutes at my limit. After the race I saw that the winner of our race averaged 28.5 mph, only 1/2 mph slower than the Pro/1 field.


Stage three: RR


Saturday, July 4th 2009 was the toughest stage of the Fitchburg Longsjo classic, and one that I had been waiting for. What made the course so hard was a 500 foot climb which we had to go up 4 times in an 11 mile loop, for a 44 mile long Road Race. I thought I could probably be in the top 20 on this stage, but still knew how many extremely strong people there were.


I lined up for the race in the 2nd row, then turned left out of a ski area parking lot and onto a very fast, 50+ mph descent. That was the first time I've ever went so fast, but the road was pretty straight.


After the descent there was a right turn, then a couple of miles of mainly flat roads before a pretty big hill. Then a downhill, followed by another uphill, this one lasting much longer. Then there was a little bit of flat ground, then another right turn, and then we were on the main part of the climb. A little more than halfway up the last part of it was the finish. Close to there the pack split, and I found myself at the front of the 2nd pack. I jumped across to the first pack without too much difficulty.


Then there was a short descent and two climbs, one longer but both not that steep, followed by the big descent again.

Fast forward to the 3rd lap, the last time up all of the hill. I started the climb in 4th position in the pack (3 guys broke away early on), moved up to 2nd, then crested it in 4th, behind a 2 person chase group that had just escaped on the climb. The chase stayed away until close to the descent, and from then on I was just trying to conserve my energy.

I began the climb to the finish in about 20th, and moved up on the steepest section, to get 20th, 17th out of the splintered 30 person field. I ended the day in 27th overall, with only Sundays' criterium left to go.