The forecast looked promising all weeklong for the Albany, New York, region.  Partly cloudy with highs near 60F for Saturday, March 28th.  This was too good to be true given that only eight days prior the Vernal Equinox arrived, up to its usual trickery announcing spring with a dismal, soppy wet and cold day.  MetLife Cycling’s two resident Vermonters, Andrew Gardner and Charles McCarthy, along with Hot Tubes wunderkid Anders Newbury, made the three hour trip down Interstate 87 to the first in a three race series, the Johnny Cake training race.  While it is steadily growing in popularity, as apparent by the sold out fields and a couple of racers looking as fit as if it were the first day of the Tour de France-albeit a little pastier- the fantastic weather didn’t hurt things. 

The course is basically a six-mile circuit traversing the wide open farmland that is Coxsackie, New York.  A sunken stretch of road during the opening mile of the race was always windy and had riders throwing rules and caution to the wind (pun, intended) by riding well over the yellow line in the lane of opposite travel.  Light on enforcement, the officials only let out a few indifferent honks from the follow car for such blatant disregard of the rules.  To be fair to the riders, the course consisted of tractor-traveled roads, often without yellow or white lines.  It all lended itself to the race’s “pre-season” feel, much like a giant Tuesday night practice crit.

A few regional teams were there, including at least a dozen of the new Spooky/NCC presented by Kenda team (formerly Kenda/Raleigh) dressed to the nines in last year’s Spooky Cycles pink and grey jerseys.  Whenever a break gained ground up the road, there were always Spooky Guys there.  It made for tough going for any other smaller team or individual rider.

It turns out, however, that half man/half Ferrari, Roger Aspholm, and a few other riders, including Anders, foiled the Spooky team’s plans, taking advantage of a third lap crash that happened just as a small attack launched from the field, allowing all of the race’s eventual podium placers to get away.  After the break steadily established itself and with Spooky’s Nathaniel Ward among them, the Spooky Team did an excellent job of slowing the race down to a crawl at times, preventing almost everything from bridging.

The game plan for Andrew and Charles was simply to get the sensations of racing back in the legs.  With a solid six months since their last bike race, it would take more than a couple of laps to break things in.  Charles failed to heed this notion early on when he scurried away from the pack during the course’s only technical section in hopes of bridging to an early break, only to be soon swept up not even half a kilometer up a short hill.  Andrew spent his day weaving in and out of the pack, remembering how to navigate a peloton.

While the two MetLife riders weren’t expecting much, the competitive juices are now most certainly flowing and all the two could talk about on the ride home was how great it will be to have to the whole team at the races soon to come.