Surviving the Thunderdome - Exeter Classic 2019

Well that was a time.

If you've been following me since last season, I finally got my Cat 3 upgrade after my final race of the 2018 season at Lewiston, and have been jumping into a handful of races so far this year to get back into racing. I trained my way through a couple of ECCC races in Pennsylvania this April, raced at Scarborough a little bit, and my usual NHMS training races, but my "real" racing has been lacking.

Having placed 8th at the Cat 3 Nutmeg State Games Crit in June and crashing out of contention on the last lap of Longsjo on Sunday, I wasn't sure how lining up for my first P/1/2/3 race at Exeter was gonna go. I had a pre-race plan of maybe going for a couple of primes, but it became clear very early on that there was no way I was going to contest anything tonight.

Exeter is one of those races that most of New England cycling dreams about. It's one of only a handful (2) twilight criteriums left on the circuit, always brings out national-caliber racers, and pays quite well if you are lucky.

It's a very punchy circuit, with fast, tight corners and an uphill sprint at the end preceded by a windy descent littered with manhole covers. All packed into a lap that is less than a mile. Oof.

The race started off, well, pretty much like this:

In the first 45 seconds of the race we were already up over 27 miles per hour down the first straightaway, on what was the slowest lap of the race. I didn't get a great start, but quickly figured out that my place in this field was about 65-70 wheels deep. I found it pretty easy to wheel-surf that far back, and the accordion effect wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated. The pack quickly settled into our race pace of 95-100 seconds a lap (28-29 mph) and my new goals were to just not get in the way and to not get dropped.

For the most part, my race was uneventful, hopping from wheel to wheel as riders were dropping off in front of me and clawing myself back up to the ever-shrinking peloton. It was a bizarre feeling being so far back in a bunch, though. I believe that this race was the largest field that I had ever started in, and usually for me, being "in the pack" is somewhere still in the top-25, and being more than 10 seconds behind the leaders usually meant that I was dropped and losing ground.

As mentioned earlier, my plan of trying to contest primes was quickly abandoned, and I let the big
guns handle things at the front.

As the laps ticked by (all 35 of them), I began feeling more and more comfortable taking some of the tighter corners in a group, figuring out braking and acceleration points that worked rather well, and trying to just hold on as well as I could from my position. Then, with 2 to go, this happened:

(Jump to 55:40, Paul Davis video)

That crash splintered the field enough for me to jump from the mid-50's into the low-30's with a lap and a half to go.

Coming into the second-to-last corner, some shenanigans happened in the lead bunch that caused another crash, sending a NE Devo rider over the curb just ahead of me, and from there anyone who wasn't still vying for the win had their fates sealed. The final split happened, and the rest of us had only to cross the line. 

My grupetto crossed the line 12 seconds behind the winner, and I was second to Tate in our "sprint" which was good enough for 23rd out of 92 starters. Afterwards, I felt surprisingly good about that finish. Usually I'm not super pleased with finishing outside of the top-10, but knowing the caliber of the race and how ridiculously hard it was, I'll take a top 25.



All photos from Katie Busick Photography