November 26, 2007 - New England Series Leader

Jamey Driscoll continued his dominance of the under 23 ranks and now holds a sizeable lead in the Verge New England Cyclocross Series. He writes the following report and you can see a great pic of him here. Josh Dillon also writes in with an amusing race report from a Canadian UCI race and included this crash photo.

Driscoll Wins Under 23 Category at Baystate Cyclocross, NECCS#5, November 24

I was on the road again after some much needed time off school and some not-so-much needed face stuffing, but both equally as enjoyable. This time I was fortunate enough to travel with my northerly teammate Josh Dillon. We decided to make the journey to the Sterling Cross race a day trip, since we rarely sleep in the comfort of out own beds before races.

Since it pretty closely resembled winter up in VT, we had the bragging rights of the saltiest team car in the parking lot. One notably unusual thing about this trip was it was not done in typical Dillon fashion, (showing up to a race with 15 minutes before the start, making the winning break, and soloing away from that break). Instead, we got there with plenty of time to spread all the contents of the team car on the grass surrounding us to prepare for the race on this beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Unfortunately, this extra time was not entirely beneficial to Josh, as he somehow ripped his derailleur off his bike during warm-up. Our awesome mechanics from Landry's bikes were right on top of it, and with the help of Toby's pit bike, Dillon was able to race. The start was a little strange, without the strength and depth of the Gran Prix races, and there was more jockeying for position around the track.

The next section of the course was a frozen steep run-up, and the first time up, there was a hold-up on the left and as I went up the right, I found myself in 4th, just off Tim, Jeremy and Jesse's wheels. Just before the pavement, I was able to catch them, and had a gap on the chasers. This only lasted about a lap, as I could not hang on to the accelerations from any one of these riders. As I got gapped off, there was Richard Fries, doing his job, "Driscoll is taking on water!!"

I was then in 4th, going flat out narrowly holding off McCormack, with Myerson in tow. The gap was decreasing until Mark waved Adam through. All of a sudden, I had a larger gap again. This did not phase the shark of course, and the next time I look back there he is, chasing me solo, and that is about the closest thing to a tractor beam as you will find, unless you are in a galaxy far, far away.

Sure enough, the inevitable happened, and since Myerson had latched onto Troy Wells, Mark's teammate, and the pair was still close, I decided to pull for a bit longer. Like a true professional, Mark pulled through to do about an equal amount of pulling. I waited till after the last corner to open up the sprint, but McCormack rarely loses a two-up sprint, and though I was gaining on him in the last 30 meters, I'm sure it was well calculated by Mark.

Later I heard Richard Fries was predicting the sprint for 4th, certainly not rooting for the underdog, with such comments as "I wonder who's going to take this one." For such a fast course, I was actually expecting smaller time gaps and larger groups in the race. Much to the contrary, the lead group was about the largest of the race and only 14 racers finished on the lead lap.

Toby Marzot had a good first race back from some painfully long time off the bike, finishing 5th in the U23s and 21st overall. Unfortunately for Dillon, rumors have spread that he lost his killer instinct to race somewhere in the abyss of time he had before the start of the race. The desert-like weather, with warmth found in the sun, and frigid cold after sunset encouraged a swift packing job to start our trek north.

Toronto UCI CX #1 & 2

Rather than making the crappy drive down rte 7, through lovely whitehall/glens falls area, past Albany, then NYC, and deep into the bowels of New Jersey...our kind brethren to the north hosted their very own UCI race in Toronto and gave me a shorter drive to try to score some UCI points.

Shorter has to be used loosely as it was only 20 miles less (or 32 kilometers eh, in canadian distances), but I did have the benefit of local hospitality in the form of my former college ski teammate and good friend Keith. So after the short 7 hr drive we found a sweet course with long straightaways and cool technical features in between...could be good for a decidedly roadie of a cross racer.

Having barely cracked the top 20 in any UCI races this year, and not having any local series points, they placed me firmly at the back for the start. But with the long start stretch, I was able to gun it up to fifth wheel by the single track and found myself in the lead group partway through the second lap. With long laps it was nearly a quarter through the race and no signs of getting dropped that I am all too familiar with. So I started to consider how I may actually win this race...weird.

But that thought was quickly thrown out as I nearly fell on my face on a nothing corner, that indicated my pressing need to get to the pit on the now flat tire. So I rode it in, changed it out (mind you B-teamers run 1 bike at these deals and it takes a little longer to change out a flat), and had to change the game plan to making it back into the top 10 for some of those UCI points everybody talks about. Fortunately, the Canadian national champ had some similar luck and we paired up to pick off enough guys for 8th place on the day (i'll take a sec to note i dusted him in the sprint). Cool, goal accomplished scoring a few points and looking forward to another opportunity the next day...or so I thought.

Regarding the next day, I'll first state that this was the coolest course I have ever ridden in my almost 2 seasons of cross racing. The major features were on the side of a ski hill that involved two wicked climbs and some BIG sweeping turns down the hill. Having over 25 years experience making big sweeping turns down ski hills I liked my chances at carrying good speed out of these features, albeit there was no snow.

Unfortunately, I never got the chance as one of the more eager back row starters came up on my side and hooked my bar sending me down hard. Not really nice of him, but that's why they call it a Pro-Am. And I got this nice hematoma on my hip as a souvenir, so I've got that going for me...which is nice.