Mansfield Madness Race Report
After twelve years of bike racing, it's increasingly rare that I run into an experience that's novel enough I feel compelled to write about it (what's up, blog that hasn't been touched in six months!). But, much to my surprise, fresh amateur bike racing experiences still DO exist in my life! And I had one this weekend. I headed down to the UConn Mansfield Madness criterium with no less than five teammates in the Men's 3/4 race, which was already a pretty fresh experience, since usually the B2C2 road squad can be counted on one hand with enough extra fingers to hold a wine glass (except that one time !). As is traditional, we had already gotten our money's worth via several hours of circular prerace discussion about RACE TACTICS by the time the whistle blew, even though THE TACTICS basically boiled down to "get in a break with Matt Shaffer." Shaffer is one of those guys who is briefly passing through the cat 3 field on his way to cat 1. He's...