After a short mid-season break, racing was back in Prospect Park with the Castelli Series and we had a great turnout with 8 of us registered and ready to go. The Friday night slack message went out “Castelli Race Strategy, who has ambitions?”, Corey nominated me to be the protected sprinter and I promptly responded in typical Australian fashion “Happy to give it a nudge”.

Tom, Alvaro and Daghan were kept busy all race, getting in breaks, bringing breaks back and launching counter attacks. I had been hiding all race and started to move through the bunch on the downhill. After a fast paced race and the last dangerous break shut down with thanks to Matt before the bottom of the hill the race would come down to a sprint.

The pace stayed high on the hill which kept the swarming to a minimum. In my last race at prospect two riders took a flyer on the hill and managed to hold off the peloton so I was hyper aware to anyone trying it this time. Sure enough, a racer from Bicycle Habitat took a flyer around the outside of the bunch and I promptly latched onto his wheel. We got half way up the hill before he looked under his arm and saw that it wasn’t a team mate on his wheel and pulled off. I was hurting by this stage but wasn’t going to give up the great position I had got into. As the main leadout swung right I managed to get back into the paceline in about 7th spot.

As the sprints opened up I came off Conor’s wheel (2nd) and went to kick but the time in the wind (198bpm for 1 minute) had sapped me of my punch (I only managed 5 seconds @ 836w!) but I managed to hold onto 4th. It was my first result since relocating to NYC and I was stoked for the team after they had worked so hard for me all race. We headed off to Gather with the coffees on me to cap off a fun and successful Saturday morning spent racing bikes in NYC.

Photo Gallery by Matthew Vandivort (@photorhetoric)