Hartford Crit v2 and New Britain

After having a week off from results work we jumped right back in with a double weekend of criteriums. It was a nice way to ease back into the scene since both races are New England standards. The Hartford Round the Park Crit was a little different this time- with Attleboro moving later in the year due to Masters Nationals the guys from the Nerac squad stepped up to fill the gap with another crit around Bushnell park in Hartford. They decided to mix it up a bit and ran the course in reverse- which was a bonus for us since we got to set up in the shade for once!

Downtown crit races are always interesting, and not just because of the bike racing- there's always something going on that makes you either laugh or wince- this time it was the kid bombing down the start finish stretch on a huffy- while talking on a cell phone. Fortunately he zipped by moments before the field came hauling around the corner. Those guys in the 30+ race have no idea how close they came to disaster...

The New Britain Criterium is another great regional tradition- the course is host to 2 or 3 races every year. And when you have a great closed course you can run a lot of races during the day- Sundays race had 12 different races. It's great to have that opportunity because it means that a lot of categories that would normally be run together like the Masters 60/70+ and the Women 4 can have their own race. Kudos to Mark and the guys at Anthem CCCC for making this happen!

As the day got underway there was one unusual thing- we had no neutral support for half of the first race. Merlin and the SRAM car were driving up to the race from Pennsylvania and got stuck in traffic behind an accident. So switching over to caravan driving mode Merlin slipped into the breakdown lane and drove (the opposite way on the highway) until he found an exit and could bypass the accident and the stopped traffic. When you look official I guess you can get away with just about anything!!