The Prospect Park Lucarelli & Castaldi Cup #7 was fantastic. My Star Track teammate Logan and I took on the challenge. He did the Cat 5 race and I the 3/4 that was going 9 laps for a total of about 50 km. Max didn’t race because he waited the prior evening for his cousins to arrive and went to bed super late (but they came even later).
My race was fairly slow for the first two laps and Logan in the Cat 5 field could see us after about one or two laps even though his field started a minute later. The race got faster on the first sprint lap (I think it was lap 3) and the speed really picked up on last hill on the final lap. When I was spiriting (about 500 meter before the finish) I got pushed out of my lane from a fellow rider as he needed to avoid other rides that were fighting for positions and body-bumped each other. I finished 32nd out of 65, six seconds behind the leader per the official results.
Throughout the race I varied my position from being top 10 to being towards the end of the pack but I managed to stay fairly tugged in. Still getting used to the Cat 3/4 races – this was my third one (following this Floyd Bennett race and this Central Park race). Down the road I need to get out of the “observe & learn mode” to become a little more aggressive by trying to get the average race speed up which works better for me.
