The Prospect Park Spring Classic in New York City was fun, cold, and early! We had to wake up at 4:30 for our 6:20 race start. Our Star Track teammates Josiah, Logan, Max, and Viv raced as well in the Cat 4/5 field where he had to go five laps for a total distance of about 25 km. There were several other juniors in our race and the 3/4 and women fields.
I have to admit that the race was tricky. The field was ginormous and fast. On the longest downhill on the course I hit a max speed of 63.6 km/h. That’s where Max got dropped because he is still on junior gearing. He was spinning out at 140 rpm! We’ll try again to get Max a new cassette which is a little tricky since we need to fit an 11-speed cassette on a 10-speed hub.
On the last two laps (out of five), attacks were flying on the hills and I was fighting pretty hard. To me, the hill wasn’t the hardest part, it was the downhill. I was frightened. Once the field finished the downhill, I had a big sigh of relief. Soon after the downhill came the sprit finish. During the sprint, I got boxed in and couldn’t go at my hardest. I came in 21st out of 52 and Max finished 43rd. At the end of the race, I did a cool-down lap with Sylvan, another junior rider who I’ve raced many times.
The first picture below is one that Victor Chan took during the race and the second picture was shot after the race and shows us with our friends from Verrazano Team Racing. Victor Chan took many more great pictures of this race and you can find those in this Facebook album.
This was really fun!! Thank you Alex for organizing the race and letting juniors participate for free. Can’t wait for your next event, the Beach Channel Time Trial which was awesome when we did it in the fall last year.
