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Second Half Season Recap

Oops. Life intervened and the website had to take a step back for the past few months.

Here's a quick run down of Team Setanta's top results since June's White Plains Crit all the way through this weekend's season concluding CRCA Club Race:

June: The Cat 4 team got great results from sprinter Joe Grgic, who won the Cat 4/5 road race at the Giro del Cielo in NJ and the B Field at the June 29 CRCA Club Race. In the Cat 3s, Graham Macbeth grabbed a couple of 2nd places in the hillier Brownstown Road Race and the Wilmington-Whiteface Road Race.

July: Graham and Jesse Walker had a great showing at the Tour of the Catskills where Graham grabbed 3rd place overall in the Cat 3 race and a spot on the podium thanks in part to a top 10 finish in the time trial, while Jesse, in one of his first races after upgrading to Cat 2, finished in 4th place overall in the Pro/1/2 field. Jesse also won the A Field at the July 28 CRCA Club Race.

Chris Gurr turned in a strong performance to grab 5th place in the Cat 3/4 race at the NY Capital Region Road Race.

For the Cat 4s, newcomer Chris Peck delivered 4th and 3rd place finishes in the B Field at the July 6th and July 20th CRCA Club Races.

August: Joe Grgic had a string of top 5s for the Cat 4 team with a 2nd place finish in the B Field of the 08/03 CRCA Club Race, a 5th place in the Mengoni Grand Prix and 4th place at the Chris Thater Memorial Criterium. Graham Macbeth, in his last race before upgrading to Cat 2, finished in 5th overall at the Tour de Millersburg.

September: The season wrapped up with Graham and Jesse travelling to Vermont for the Cat 2 Green Mountain Stage Race. Jesse came up 2 points shy of winning the KOM jersey for the weekend.

In the last CRCA Club Race of the year, Chris Peck and Joe Grgic finished 2nd and 3rd to clinch 2nd place in the Team Cup Standings for Setanta.

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Fuck yeah Setanta!

Andrej Vogel and Joe Gergic go 1 and 2 today at the White Plains Criterium.  

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Race Report: White Plains Criterium

Setanta's Cat 4 sprinter stars, Andrej Vogel and Joe Grgic, were back at it last weekend at the White Plains Criterium. Race reports below:

Joe Grgic's report:

This course was deceptively technical, two slow turns, 2 fast turns. So out of the gate, i wanted to push the pace to get some race speed laps in.  after 3 laps, settled into the pack and started making mental notes of the course and what the pack was doing (as well as test my hand strength and tactile senses vie hard braking)

On lap 20, i started testing where i could pass people.  Best opportunity was after the slow turn 2 going up the hill and the crest.  the pack would go in bunched in turns 1-2, and i knew i could out muscle up the hill.  when everybody would kind of tire or slow at the crest in prep for the fast turn three, i could keep going and trusted myself to go in hot into turn three.  

So from there, i made my final strategy,  with 10 laps left, move to front half of pack,  with 5 laps left, be in the front 20,  with 2 to go, be in my final sprint position.   I figured to be safe and ready for the final lap,  2 to go would be critical.

Sure enough, with three to go, the pace picked up considerable, nice surge with 2 to go through turns 1-2, and a couple people dropped off on the hill. so i was in prime position.  As a benefit, Andrej was up front along with Sven (he got second ad the DJ classic).  so i knew the front pack I was in was strong and all the players were in front.

Last lap: clean through turns 1-2 and we blasted up the hill.  Sven was on the inside while Andrej led the line to the outside.  Sven took turn 3 too tight and slid out, me along with the 5 guys in front all watched Sven slide across our path as we went through turn three, a couple had to brake, but we all made it through.  messy pack into turn 4 due to the crash, but i managed to kick it into gear and made it to Andrej right at the finish line.

Final result, Andrej 1st, me 2nd. and a great showing for Setanta!

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Andrej Vogel solos off the front for the win!

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Race Report: Rockleigh Criterium (June 6)

A Race Report from  Rockleigh on 6 June 2013 in which Andrej tells us how to win:

I rode over to Rockleigh today via 501 in the rain, which was pretty unpleasant. Luckily I had my rain jacket. I racked up 20 miles for my warm up and had to scramble to get signed in and get my number pinned up. For the first few laps I warmed up my legs by testing out the field, attacking 3 or 4 times and following moves. As the only Setanta there I knew I would have to leave something for the end, so I spent most of the middle of the race in the middle of the group. Going into the last two laps of the race everyone let a young junior breakaway for a half a lap. Once the guys put in a little work to catch the little guy the pace slowed like crazy and I attacked and gave it all I had. I got a good 10s gap going into turn 3 of 4 and decided to bury myself with a lap and a half to go. I was moving, but not crushing it, and surprisingly saw my gap was growing. Last lap I just pedaled through the pain and kept myself above 24 mph and stuck it out for the solo victory. Won a whopping  $35. I'll be back there next week to try and grab the leaders jersey.

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Race Report: Tour of Mount Joy

Jesse Walker traveled to Pennsylvania to race the Tour of Mount Joy omnium. His report is below:

Jesse’s Report:

First off this is a great race. I highly recommend doing it. I think we should do all of our racing in PA. It is awesome. (overkill?)

Saturday was HOT. I think 545 was the only reasonable time to start a race that day. Surely not 1040. 9 laps. Round Here racing had 5 guys and shot one off from the gun. Two other guys jumped off to meet him and then two more Round Here racers rolled off the front. Those 5 were the days break. I was part of the chasing group of 6. It was a rag tag bunch which worked well enough to keep the field at bay but sucked at making time on the front bunch. I over cooked the third to last turn and my recovery but in 9th for the finish.

TT. I like TT’s I could get used to them. 3rd place 14 sec. off pace.

It was omnium style scoring and not everyone was in the stage race from the day before. So the TT put me in 5th place.

This was a more difficult race than the previous day although shorter. We let guy solo the field from lap one for the win. He was not part of the Stage race. The five of us in the top of the field marked and attacked each other for 2hrs. We let two other guys go up the road mid-way through the final lap. Coming into the final straight I was fourth wheel on a separation from the bunch. Third wheel gapped badly so I had to pull past him to finish a disappointing 6th.

One final note. It was a small omnium field 20 or so and each of the races where like 30ish. The payout was to 15th place on both the road races and to 10th on the omnium.

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Race Report: Dave Jordan Classic

Joe Grgic and Andrej Vogel were Setanta's only representatives at the Dave Jordan Classic in Central Park on Saturday. Their report from the race follows below:

Andrej's Report:

Going into the last lap both me and Joe moved up into good position. Going into the flats right before the tavern finish I saw that Joe was in good position and decided that since my position was nowhere close to as good as Joe's, decided to stretch the field for him. I sprinted into the flat and stretched the field out, giving him a better chance. I burned out and rolled through the finish so it's awesome to hear that he won!

Joe's Report:

took it easy on the first lap to let the field settle down, on the second lap, moved up to test how hard/easy it was going to be.  moved to the front for the second Primes and gave it a 50% effort.  i wasn’t feeling too hot but wanted to see who the sprinters were etc.  made a mental note that at 50%, i could keep up, so then i went into energy saving mode.  Felt this was safe given the first two laps, i had the only decent attack and the pace was fairly slow.

  laps 3-5, barely hung on the back. had a headache,   kept trying to  focus on keeping my HR low, but to be honest, i was out of it mentally.  HR wouldn’t settle, i was tired, blah blah blah.  the whole, DFL isn’t to bad, as long as i finish the race mentality.

  last lap, flipped the switch mentally and went into serial killer mode. Moved up the pack.  i knew that getting in front prior to Harlem hill would be key, so was aggressive and made my presence felt as i moved up (i.e., nobody was going to scrub me off my path/wheel).  got to top 10 on HH, ground up out and had a good 5-6 people in front of me that i stayed behind.  this group remained relative intact through the three sisters and leading the surge up to the sprint.  That was until Andrej comes blasting by and everything fell apart.

  I big Kudos to Andrej, i think he caught everybody off guard (myself included) To be honest, i was thinking what the heck is he doing at the time...too early, too early.  but it did separate the strong from the weak and other than a close scrub from a guy who died 100m from the finish, i managed to power through and take 1st by maybe a foot.  It hurt, first time i felt like i was going to throw up after a finish.

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Race Report: Killington Stage Race

Last weekend, Graham Macbeth, Jesse Walker, Chris Gurr, Henoch Getz, David Carr and Fred David traveled to unseasonably cold and wet Vermont for the three day Killington Stage Race. Their reports on the weekend are below:

Jesse's Report from Stage 1:

Third in field sprint today.  Rider in 2nd was dqed.  So I got second.  Not bad for a race cut in half because it was the most miserable riding conditions ever.

Race was cut in half due to the conditions.   Enough riders did not finish due to hypothermia that they are all allowed to race again tomorrow.  The headwind coming to the field sprint was so strong my compact 50 x 11 was enough for third on this usually extremely fast downhill sprint. 

Chris' Report from Stage 1:

I popped both tires 5k from the line when I hit a pot hole. I saw the motoref back at the lodge and petitioned her to get the same time as the pack. Petition granted.

Fred's Report from Stage 2:

First 25 miles were mainly downhill, so a lot of jockeying for position. As soon as we hit the first KOM, the field blew up. I was sitting around 6th wheel when the GC leader, his teammate and one other rider put in a hard acceleration and went ahead. I ended up with a group of three others chasing that hit got to the end of the KOM around 20-30 seconds behind the lead three. Unfortunately, the rest of the group decided to wait for the group of six behind us instead of chasing the leaders. We didn't see the leaders the rest of the day.

Our larger group of 10 was fairly organized, and did put in an effort to chase down the leaders for 20 miles or so.

When we jumped back on to US-4, though, we still could not see the leaders and were suddenly riding into a stiff headwind. At that point, the whole group started conserving for the final climb and gave up on the chase.

When we hit East Mtn. Rd five of us split ahead of the group. After the first KOM, I put in a hard effort to get away from the other four. I paid for it, though, and the rest of the group got away from me. I chased one guy down in the last 200 meters and ended up 7th on the day.

David's Report from Stage 3:

TT -- Graham absolutely crushed the TT with a 26 something time, 7th on the day, 7th overall GC. Jesse crushed it too, it's only that he had to do an extra loop because he followed my example (in earlier TT's) and made a wrong turn (and still placed in the top 10, even with the 30 sec detour). Fred kept his 7th place. Chris G. put in a really good time too (without all the TT equipment). I gutted it out to get a top 10 in the TT (i.e. 10th) for my field and ended up not in last place in the GC. Not my best race today, but not my worst either (that was the day before). Glad to finish out the weekend with at least something in the top half of the field.

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Race Report: Tour de Syracuse Omnium (Cat 3)

While some of the team was racing in Central Park last weekend, Team Setanta's Graham Macbeth and Henoch Getz traveled to Syracuse for the Tour de Syracuse Omnium.

Here's Graham's report:

The TT

As is typical I arrived in town late and got 3.5 hours of sleep Friday night. It should be noted that my girlfriend and soigneur Cynthia gallantly drove the whole way as I sat there cursing how far away Syracuse is. I dozed off and on most unhelpfully while she succeeded in not killing us both. I had spent most of my evenings the previous week getting high on acetone and Continental tubular glue so the next morning I was still swapping brake pads and making sure my TT bike would shift.  I got a solid 6-minute warm up in, found the start, and was off! It was a 15km rolling out-and-back course. I spent most of the time trial struggling in vain to convert 15km to miles and then halve that sum so I could figure out when I would be able to stop time trial-ing. I found out later I had missed winning the TT by 5 seconds.  I admit I was annoyed at this.

The Criterium

Later that day The Crit was combined with the P/1/2, which made for a fast hour of racing on that really fun course. I was staying with it, following moves sometimes, declining most of them. I mean I really didn't care if Mt. Borah or Mtn Khakis or any other Pro-ish team won - I was aiming for Cat 3 upper middle-ish!  So it made me quite vexed to behold, on what I thought was the penultimate lap, a guy with his hands in the air! So I took 14th in the Cat 3 when I was really aiming for 6-8th.

The Road Race - Sunday

The race started off with a volley of attacks, so I lobbed one for kicks. The winner of the TT and another GC guy joined me and we pressed some more. Soon more guys bridged up and we started our somewhat rusty rotation, about 8 strong. I hoped that Henoch and other teammates were slowing things down in the pack. I attacked a few times in a 'let's-hurry-this-up" kinda way but nothing much happened until we came to the end of first lap - the 3/4 mile finishing climb.  I was feeling good and went for the KOM GC points, just missing the maximum points by a tire but I realized that I had a gap and that the group looked to be in a spot of bother.  So I threw caution to the wind, hammered down the steep backside of the hill and onto the rolling farmland below.  For the next 8 miles I did some full-on time-trialing out of sight from the group that I knew was not working together very well.  This slightly downhill rolling section was fast, I was keeping my speed in the high-30s for most of the time. I looked back at the long stretches of road and there was no sight of the break. I was feeling optimistic about my chances. Suddenly I looked up and I saw a marshal in the middle of the road 200 feet ahead and I noticed the was 120 degree right turn I wasn't expecting. I grabbed the brakes and the back tire lost traction, skidded left, and I slammed onto my left side and kind of rolled and slid. According to Strava I was doing about 31mph. In a fit of profanity I gathered up my bottles and other items strewn about. The bike was a tweaked but rideable. I had a bloody elbow. I waited for the group. From then on to the last climb I went from feeling great to feeling like shit which I guess is the result of exertion, trauma and self-loathing. At one point I was gapped off the back for several excruciating minutes and thought I was done. I clawed back on and tried my best to recover for the last climb.  It arrived and I did what I could, holding 3rd position in strange slow-motion till close to the end.

Luckily the winner was not a NY state resident so I ended up 4th on the day, 3rd the NYS Championships, 3rd in the Omnium Overall.  Not a bad result but if I paid just a little more attention it would help immensely.  I blame the glue.

Side notes:

Interestingly my kit was only lightly abraded and not ripped. My  base layer was totally shredded beneath at my shoulder and my skin a bit as well. My elbow got the deep cut and it got really puffy and sore but it is getting better.  I think I'll be able to use bar extensions for the TT by Monday...

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Product Review: Profile Design T1+ Clip-on Aerobars

Out of the box...

Cost: $139.99 at Bicycle Habitat

As preparation for this weekend's Killington Stage Race in Vermont, which includes an 11 mile flat, straight time trial, I bit the bullet and purchased my first set of aerobars: Profile Design's T1+ Clip-on Aerobars.

The positioning of the armrests on the bars is easy to adjust by loosening and retightening a single hex screw on each of the two bars. The width between the armrests can also be increased or decreased by loosening and retightening two hex screws on each armrest.

Adjusting the bars was straightforward, though as always when clamping parts on to carbon handlebars, a torque wrench is helpful to avoid over- or under-tightening.

The cushions for the armrests include velcro straps that wrap under the armrests' frame to secure the cushions in place. Some reviews I read online reported the cushions slipped while riding in the aerobars, but as of yet, I have not experienced this issue.

While I do not have any prior experience with aerobars to compare it against, my test rides in the Park have felt smooth with no major issues. Next Monday's timetrial will give a better indication.

Until then, though, these bars, while more expensive than comparable aluminum aerobars, seem like a solid and reasonably priced set of entry-level carbon aerobars.

- FD

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Race Report: CRCA Club Race (May 18)

This weekend, Team Setanta was back in Central Park for a CRCA scratch race finishing at the Engineer's Gate at East 90th Street.

Results and race reports follow:

A Field: 45. Marc Mauceri 73. David Carr

B Field: 2. Joe Grgic 9. Fred David 16. Nic Lawson 18. Todd Brilliant

Marc Mauceri's Report:

-Me and David. -Large. Fast. Sprint.  No breaks of note, though constant attacks.  Field just too fast. -Ambulance in horse-sh#t alley on last lap waylaid my chance at a top 50.

Joe Grgic's Report:

Good race overall, definitely a confidence builder for me after a crappy tuesday outing at training & FBF:

First lap, pushed the pace to warm up and get the blood going again.  Got condemned by a couple of riders for working too hard.

Laps 2-5, sat in the onion of the group, planning on where i want to move up to the front of the pack for the last lap so i dont get caught in traffic (and rested like it was my job).  Tried out a couple of different strategies and felt confident i could move up to the front with ease in a number of sports

Lap 6. Moved up on Meers decent to top 10 and grinded up HH.  When they tired up the first hill of 3 sisters, i moved to the front and pulled for 20 secs, knew i wanted to be rested so dogged it some.  A waffle guy was kind enough to pass by which i quickly merged into his slip stream.  Maintained 5-10 position through HSA, then maintained my position in the surge up cat hill.

Final sprint, felt good after Cat hill, and the pack wasnt as aggressive as i was expecting.  the surge kind of just kept accelerating, so i found my wheel to follow then kicked it into high gear.  Quickly moved up to 2nd place and was closing quickly on 1st, but the lead guy managed to stave off dying and i ran out of road.  Kudos to the foundation winner for digging deep.  

Overall a good race with a fast pace. number of laps were sub 14min.