Battenkill Roubaix, April 14, 2007 race report:

Jon Bruno, John Hanson, Stan Jurga, Dave Berryman, Brian Hayes, and I took to the start line on April 14 at the 3rd annual Battenkill Roubaix in Salem, NY. In true Roubaix (or upstate NY in early spring) fashion, the FAST/IF powered by Lionette's squad headed 4 hours north west to Salem NY for the Battenkill Roubaix. This is the third year that Bttenkill has taken palce, and it has already become one of the most popular and competitive professional/elite race destinations in North America. Teams from Canada and the US descended upon the tiny upstate NY village of Salem on this past Saturday to race a 75 mile point to point road race, 25% of which was on dirt roads. Teams of note in full force were EVA/Devinci (Canada), Jet Fuel Pro Cycling (Canada), Team RACE (Canada), Fiordifrutta Elite Cycling Team, FAST/IF powered by Lionette's, Legal Sea Foods, Kenda/Raleigh, CCB/Volkswagen, Champion Systems, Coast to Coast Development, and GS Mengoni. A select few well known professionals showed up as well including Michael Cody (Jelly Belly Pro Cycling), Al Donahue (Nerac Pro Cycling), Dan Vaillancourt and Andy Guptil (Colavita/Sutter Home Pro Cycling), and Andrew Randell (Symmetrics Pro Cycling from Canada). The race started hard from the gun with the first dirt road section about 2km in. Much like a cross race, everyone wanted the hole shot going into this narrow dirt road climb. We climbed and descended for the first half of the race at a pretty aggressive pace, with a few attacks going off the front but nothing sticking and no real threats. The first real threat came at about 45 miles in or so when a yellow lab/retriever mix of a pooch made his way into the peloton as we were cruising at about 25mph. The peloton swerved to miss the dog who seemed to be having a blast running in the opposite direction of the 130 person deep peloton. We regrouped soon enough and the action continued. Just before the dog joined the action, the pace motorcycle led the entire peloton off of the course into a village. The motorcycle realized the mistake, banged a u-turn and began heading in the right direction. For a motorcycle, easy, no problem, a quick u turn and on his way. For 130 skinny guys on bikes, not so much. There was a moment of chaos/humor/stupidity as we all slowed to a stop and u-turned our way back up the same street we came down. We were riding on people's lawns, sidewalks, gravel gutters on the side of the road, regrouping as a peloton to head in the correct direction once again. The race became neutral for a few miles as we were sure to not drop anyone, and eventually things got rolling pretty hotly once again. Soon enough, right before the worst section of dirt rollers about 20 miles from the finish, Fiordifrutta massed at the front of the race to get things going and began to ride a very hard tempo to try to break the group up a bit. We went up and down these 20% steep dirt climbs, one after the other. The problem here was that there was not ample recovery in between cimbing efforts. The climbs were not terribly long, just really steep with a soft dirt road surface that made the tires seem glued to the mud. As a team, we made it over what would have been great to be the last climb, only to find out that after a short descent and a hard right turn, we were climbing again. I believe this is the point that broke all of us. Fiordifrutta exploded the race at this point, and a lead group of about 20-25 took off leaving stragglers behind. FAST/IF powered by Lionette's found ourselves chasing in our respective groups until the finish. Jon Bruno, Brian Hayes, and myself chased in a group that by the end was 20 or so guys. The good news is that everyone finished, and finished safely. No crashes or incidents on the road, and no mechanicals either. I did hear that someone did an endo right in front of Stan as we were racing through one of the small villages, and the guy's chain popped off his bike and flew right into Stan's hand. He caught the chain and whipped it to the ground and out danger. Weird. That was the race really. A hard, early season race that required ultra toughness and superb fitness. Our fitness is getting there and surely will be in a few weeks to come. We did our best at Battenkill, but found ourselves outmatched and over powered when the going got heavy. We are however encouraged by the performance, and we are given a huge dose of motivation to keep up on our training and fitness as the racing season is just getting going.
*results are posted here* http://home.nycap.rr.com/drakesnorth/images/Results.pdf
Thanks for reading and thanks to all of our sponsors for the tremendous support and for giving us the opportunity to race our bicycles under your names. Until next weekend. . .

Adam Branfman
Newton, MA
FAST/IF powered by Lionette's