May 3, 2007 - Turtle Pond Win

The Fiordifrutta squad has hit full stride in the spring races, and Josh Dillon writes a couple of race reports below.

Fiordifrutta Takes 1-3-4-5 at Turtle Pond Circuit Race, April 21

I couldn't have been a worse teammate...except that I won the race. It was the only thing that saved my butt after being completely sub-par on a team that dominated the race from start to finish. I was late to the start, missed the team meeting, and rode at the back the entire first half of the race.

Meanwhile FdF had riders in every single break, as many as 4 riders in one early move that stayed away for ~10k. Often is the case that the results don't tell the whole story of the race, but not at Turtle Pond with FdF occupying 4 of the top 5 at the finish. Pretty dang sweet.

After my team busted their butts to make the race, I covered one move (because it was Spinelli). A couple guys followed (including a bridge by Driscoll who was on the same program I was and also saved his butt) and that was the winning move. With 10k to go I attacked the break and held it to the line with a 40 second advantage over Spinelli. When I turned around and rode back to the finish line I was greeted by one red jersey after another as we took home the lion share of the winnings. Go Fruits. Rifflemacher – 3rd, Marzot – 4th, Lipka – 5th

Dillon and Marzot take 3rd and 5th at Battenkill-Roubaix, April 14

Battenkill-Roubaix, almost like the real thing just half the distance. Oh, also lots of dirt instead of cobbles. And the field is slightly, ever so slightly, softer. And no podium girls either. Aside from that, just like the real thing. So we were fired up to give it a go and score a win.

Mother nature kindly broke the cold wet trend for the start of the race, which was nice as I have nearly tripled my life total of 35 degree rainy training rides in this spring alone. We started this New England classic with arguably our strongest squad to date, consisting of Johs Huseby, Matt White, Cory Burns, Jamey Driscoll, Toby Marzot, Will Riffelmacher, Josh Lipka, and myself. Will and Johs covered us in the early moves, with Johs making the first move that stuck which was brought back after the first series of climbs due to accelerations in the field.

Then two lone riders went for suicide moves that amazingly stretched out to more than 4 minutes. That was until FdF took over the driver's seat and started pulling it back with ~30 miles remaining in the race. The tempo effort also coincided nicely through the longest stretch of dirt road which gave us great position and Whitey took advantage on the steepest part by putting down the hurt. This flushed out Guptill and Vallaincourt (both Colavita), Quintero (CRCA) and myself.

We liked this scenario, as it was a carbon copy of what happened last year, which brought a good result. Two out of five is always good so we hit it, but the groups started to form behind and they were intent on being there for the finish as well, so a repeat of last year was not to be. The race started to come back together which brought Spinelli to the front and he decided to give it a go solo, with now ~15 miles remaining.

No sooner than they hit the front group, our youngster 'cross superstars Jamey and Toby began to slowly reel Spinelli in on the run into the final climb. Jamey continued to pull into the final climb, where Cory then took over. He hammered it to launch Whitey and myself again, which worked great....until we ran out of real estate, ie we (Matt, myself, and the two Colavita riders) and we rolled over the top with a slim margin which didn't exist any longer by the bottom of the descent to start the 5k drag to the finish, and we were caught by most of the remaining peloton.

As soon as we hit the drag, I jumped and was joined by the rest of the eventual podium (coincidentally) + Guptill. As soon as we were brought back, Matt drove the counter which was joined by two other riders....and then Cody (Jelly Belly) jumped across!! I couldn't believe it. I thought he was long gone, somewhere back aways pulling dirt out of drive train. Then someone else tried to jump across which eventually brought it back together with less than a 1k.

So, Matt played off the in-house rivalry and led out the sprint which made Cody ancy (very un-Cody like) and jumped on his wheel, such that when Matt pulled off Cody was left in the wind from ~2-300 meters out...too far for such a fast sprint. As he faded I jumped and was overtaken by Quintero and Mathieu Roy (EVA-Devinci) at the line. Toby put in a terrific sprint to take 5th giving us two in the top 5. Of course we wanted the win, and raced to win but came up a little short.