By: Embrocation Team Apr 14

The goddess of bicycle racing is a fickle bitch. She giveth bountifully and she taketh away perniciously. Lots of ups and downs this past week. Let’s start at the beginning.

New Team Bikes

If you’ve been following the escapades of the team or tuning in Jeremy’s column recently you may have seen a few pictures of our new team bikes. We’re riding Ridley’s this year and we’ve had our Ridley Heliums for some time now; we’ve just been waiting on the SRAM parts. SRAM’s been experiencing the problem of too much demand and not quite enough supply this year (probably because they have such darn good products) and so were more busy supplying parts to paying customers instead of free-loaders like us. No harm, no foul. With SRAM parts in hand we (actually I) spent the latter part of last week building bikes over at International Bicycle Center, who as the team sponsor, were gracious enough to let us use their workshop.

Now that the bikes are built up we’ll be adding a lot more content to our team site regarding those bikes and other equipment. New toys are fun especially when they’re as nice as these. I’ve been having a blast building these things up, delivering them to riders and getting the subsequent emails, texts and phone calls thanking me effusively and telling me how awesome they are.

The team bikes this year are Ridley Helium framesets with SRAM Red drivetrains and brakes. Bars and stems right now come from 3T and saddles are a mix of Fizik Arionnes and Aliantes depending on a given rider’s preferences. Wheels come from Bontrager with most of the team using the Race X Lite clincher wheels this past weekend, and some of their carbon options coming before too long. Tires this year come from Challenge, although many of our riders were using Maxxis tires for the rough roads of the Battenkill. And of course there are the little details: Yokozuna Reaction cables and housings in white make shifting insanely fast and efficient, while Embrocation branded finishing tape is just cool.

I’m please to say that despite building these just hours before the race all the bikes held up to the Battenkill extremely well, with no flat tires or other technical issues of any kind – a testament to the durability of our frames and other components more so than to my mechanical skills.

So, new bikes… good. Really, really good.

The Race
This is what it’s all about, after all. Kick-ass bikes for a brutal ass-kicking race. Dieter Drake put on another great edition of the Tour of the Battenkill this year – probably the best yet and it’s not over yet with the UCI race coming next weekend. Dieter got a bunch of grief regarding the registration fee for this race, but in my opinion, it is and was worth it. The roads, the level of competition – just the entire aura of the race is something that appeals to very much to me. I get what he’s trying to do and I think it’s a good value.

Plus it was a beautiful spring day. Aside from the threat of high winds, it was a perfect day to ride bikes. Cool but sunny – a perfect day for Mad Alchemy Mild Embrocation, actually.

As with any race, this one is unpredictable as well. The reigning logic amongst the majority of our team, and others, was that due to the length and difficulty of the course, combined with stiff headwinds over much of the first 2/3 of the course, there would be little chance of an early breakaway staying off the front. We were proved incorrect as a break casually rolled off the front of the group after about 20k, never to be seen again. Meanwhile the race lumbered along at a manageable pace and exploded exactly where we expected it would – outside the town of Greenwich on a long rolling dirt section called Mountain Road. The pace lifted, and over the course of the next few miles attacks came and went, splits formed and riders came off the back.

Shortly after this began we approached one of the more technical sections of the course: a twisty, fast dirt downhill with a 90 degree left hand turn at the bottom onto a stiff uphill. Colin Murphy and I were the lone Embros in the front group, which had been formed on the climb up the opposite side of this hill. Just before the 90 turn Colin and a few other rides went down right in front of me. It happened suddenly and without warning. All I remember is seeing Colin’s bike flying up in the air and pushing into the rider to my left in an attempt to get out of the way of the fray. I made it by with only inches to spare and took the turn onto Meetinghouse. The group was thinned further by the crash but the pace only increased on the ups and downs of Meetinghouse road.

The final climb in the course comes just a couple miles after Meetinghouse road and is a stair-step dirt climb. We hit the base of this climb with a chase group of about 15 to 20 guys and lifted the pace immediately. By the time we summited and descended onto the final 4 kilometer flat finishing stretch, we were a group of about 10. The games started, with attacks and counters, surges and slowing. With about 1k to go I tried my hand at an attack and took Ernie Tautkus from the CCNS team with me. We caught and passed a couple riders who had been caught in-between groups and managed to get to the line before our chase group. This was good enough for 7th on the day for me – a fairly good finish for an early, hard race.

Shortly behind, Jay finished in the second chase group along with Francisco. I didn’t know it at the time but Josh, Jackson and Pete Smith had stopped to be with an injured Colin on the side of the road. Jackson and Pete would drift in many minutes behind us, having given up any aspirations of a placing to be with their fallen comrade. Josh, I would later learn, decided to hitch a ride with Colin in an Ambulance all the way back to Saratoga where we would meet him later. Kyle, for his part, had done a good deal of work at the front of the race early on and decided to cut the day short well before the final hills. He met me at the finish line, smile on his face and beer in hand.

The Aftermath
Any feelings of joy or relief at finishing were quickly dismissed as I got on to the task of trying to determine what happened to Colin and any other Embro rider who might have been a victim of the crash. Rumors were flying including one that Josh hit a mailbox – thankfully this proved inaccurate. Word eventually reached us that Colin had sustained some considerable injuries and was brought from the scene of the crash to Saratoga Hospital via ambulance with Josh, who had not fallen at all, as his escort. We saddled up, divvied up Murphy’s possessions and car and headed to the hospital to assess the damage.

The ER at Saratoga Hospital was very quiet on a Saturday evening. The only sounds to be heard as we entered were muffled conversation from behind a closed curtain and then the tell-tale sound of bike cleats on a hard, polished floor. Josh had been walking around the hospital in his kit and shoes for a couple hours at this point. And then, there was Colin.

A handfull of broken ribs, partially collapsed lung, a separated shoulder and host of other lesser injuries were the results of a high speed crash onto a dirt road. Over a few hours at the hospital Colin went through several tests and scans. The doctors, who I think were a bit bored by the lack of patients, decided to put Colin in the ICU over night in an effort to monitor his lung issue.

Josh and I stayed with Colin until his worried (and pregnant) wife arrived from Boston around midnight. I have to hand it to Colin. He really handled his misfortune with grace and positive attitude that I could not have mustered. He was obviously on form and was on his way to having a great finish. To have that taken away by hitting a pothole or a touch of wheels at the wrong time must have been excruciatingly disappointing; but Colin never let on. As we sat with him in the ICU he wanted to hear all about the end of the race, wanted to make sure his bike was ok, which it was, and even started spouting off some business ideas he’d be having. All in all, he handled it like a pro.

And so goes the 2010 Tour of the Battenkill Pro Am. We’ll be back next weekend to support Cory and Bradshaw as they tackle the UCI race. More on that later.

Thanks for reading.

JM