Kenda Cup East, Windham, NY

Second road trip in as many weeks brought me to Windham Mountain for the last of the US Cup races on the East Coast. I checked into my hotel about 4pm Friday afternoon, changed and headed out to the venue to pick up my packet and pre-ride the course. This was the second year in a row for me at Windham and having glanced at the course map on-line before I left I knew what to expect. This is an up the mountain for the first half lap and down the second half.

I picked up my packet and on the way out ran into Kelli Lusk, who is in charge of events at USA Cycling. I learned from her that the course had been shortened, like Mt. Snow the week before to comply with UCI regulations. To my disappointment they cut a good portion of the climb out to make the course about 3.6 miles long and after completing my first slow pre-ride lap in about 28 minutes I knew it was going to be a short race even with 4 laps. It turned out to be less than 1.5 hours on the bike ... for the second straight week.

My race went off Saturday morning at 8am so I was up at 6 and off to the local coffee shop for a triple shot americana and some oatmeal. While I was waiting for my coffee, I recognized a familair voice, looked around to see who it was. It was the race anouncer that was at Mt. Snow the weekend earlier. I said hello and he introduced himself as Bruce Dickman. I can see why he makes his living as an event anouncer, very outgoing personality!

I finished my breakfast and headed out to the course. The turnout wasn't very big and like Mt. Snow the promoters decided to combine several Cat. 1 age groups at the start. The under 40 group went off first and the 40+ after that. Unlike the previous weekend the promoters decided to go with leg markings so at least you knew who you were racing against. I was able to get a good start and had only a couple of the younger age group riders ahead as we went into the single track. I had a gap on Jim Frith, second place on the podium and winner of the East Coast US Cup, by the end of the first climb. I felt good and had a clean race for the win. One of the 45-49 guys that beat me, Ken Welch, sent me the podium pic below. None other than the afforementioned Bruce Dickman anounced the awards ... and let everyone know we had breakfast together, which must have been the motivation for my top spot on the podium, which was presented by an old Mountainside friend - Hodgie, who sends his best to Dave and all the gang at Mountainside.



Full Results for the US Cup can be found at:
http://www.uscup.net/index.php?results

Windham Results:

http://www.windhammountainbike.com/WindhamMountainBike.com/Yankee_Clipper_+_Kenda_Cup.html