MetLife Pro-Am Cycling Opens New England Racing Season at Marblehead, MA
MARBLEHEAD, MA. On an early spring morning along the North Shore of Massachusetts, bike racers from across New England took to the road for the season opener on the affluent isle of Marblehead Neck. The seasonably cool temps and steady winds that typically characterize the race were on-hand, as was the MetLife Pro-Am Cycling team, out en masse for their first team event of the season.
With many riders fresh off of training blocks in Florida, California, and the “suburban paradise” of New Jersey, Metlife aimed to capitalize on the day as an attempt to test both the early season form of its roster as well as the team unity and tactics essential for success throughout the long season ahead. With a diesel lineup of riders Dolmat-Connell, Coutu, Bennette, Ferry, Fleming, Sheehan, Masson, McCarthy, and Molloy on-hand, Snoopy’s soldiers looked to take their numbers and control of the event from start to finish.
As the sizable Pro-1-2-3 field embarked for 17 laps of the technical 2.2 mile circuit, the pent-up aggression of a winter off the tarmac was palpable. From the outset, the race was peppered with attacks, contact, and the ever-constant-threat of that Cat 3 who hasn’t seen pavement in 5 months.
Active early, MetLife put Charlie “5-7nm” McCarthy and Corey “Diesel Fuel Only” Masson up front to cover the early moves that often make the windswept race. Not content to spectate, McCarthy saw his opportunity a few laps in, and launched a daring solo attempt on the series of rollers just beyond the finish. Though his teammates converged on the front and controlled the peleton for most of a lap, the few-man bridge critical to CMac’s success never materialized and it was again grouppo compacto.
The boys in blue remained at the front through the halfway point, marking attacks and working to ensure that nothing dangerous escaped without some representation. As these efforts began to take their toll and with the race looking as it would stay together, the team slipped back into the field for some much needed recovery. Bennette, however, found himself near the front as an extremely dangerous Toby Marzot (fiordifruitta) slipped away, and managed to power his massive carcass up to the sylphlike Marzot. Marzot, however, soon realized his chest was in approximate circumference to Bennette’s left calf, and elected to sit-on in fear of what might happen in a two-up sprint. Sheehan, seeing the breaks potential, rooted through his suitcase of courage and bridged across with two riders from Mechanical Services. Despite several deilghtful minutes in the pain cave, the pair was unable to keep the now extremely dangerous group away, and a hungry peleton decided a mass sprint finish was in order.
With Masson and Fleming covereing the closing yet ultimately doomed breakaways, the remainder of the MetLife squad began to assemble the Blue Train for a run at what appeared would be a Nascar-worthy finish. Coutu, Ferry, Sheehan, and an extremely impressive Scott Dolmat-Connell “SDC” maneuvered to the front in the penultimate lap, though an emerging Fiordifruitta mass made their efforts all the more difficult. With plentiful jockeying, swerving, contact, and rumored gunshots, the closing kilometers saw Coutu forced early into the wind and ultimately off the front. Next-in-line Ferry was forced to pull some maneuvers reminiscent of his years in the Foreign Legion and subsequently lost the line of SDC, Sheehan, and Bennette. As SDC faced the prospects of a swim in the likely frigid North Atlantic, Sheehan and Bennette were left to their own devices with roughly 1.5Km – and a nasty 100m riser – to go. The former proved he is in fact human, and began to fade with around 500m (and the impending wall) to go, just as a revived and possibly caped “super” Coutu shot past the field in an effort to reconstitute the train. The hill, however, proved the great equilizer, and as the looming sprint stalled up the rise, Bennette saw his only chance to move up appear. Grasping his “retro-type” (and top-secret) Shimano hoods, “Quadzilla” engaged the overdrive and passed the mass of the fading field. Despite gaining on the group of eventual winner Eric Schlidge (fiordifruitta), the effort proved too long and a gasping Bennette was left to settle for a respectable 7th.
The MetLife Team will next be in action at the Chris Hinds Memorial Criterium in Charlestown, RI April 12th.
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