Plenty of crashes at Shedd Park. © Natalia McKittrick, Pedal Power Photography
by Natalia McKittrick
Organized by the Boston Road Club and Cambridge Bicycle Cycling Club, the Boston Road Club Cyclocross is unlikely to get UCI-certified due to the many challenges the course had up its sleeves. Offering, for a change, a test of racers’ bike handling skills, the challenges are precisely why it attracted over 300 racers For a local non-UCI race, that’s an impressive figure.
This year the course features included barriers moved from a flat straight-away to the bottom of a longish, steepish hill which was otherwise rideable, a “spiral of death” sequence of four 180-degree turns and mud divots which launched racers off the course left and right.
In the absence of Tim Johnson, Jamey Driscoll and the trio of Maureen Bruno-Roy, Natasha Elliott and Mary McConneloug (and the others digging in deep at Whitmore’s) the elite races offered some exciting battles. Arielle Filiberti traded places with Karen Potter of Zanconato, interweaving their waves of intervals, but in the second half of the race Filiberti took charge and kept the gap steady until the finish.
The elite men’s lead group broke off in the first lap with Justin Spinelli (Svelte Cycles) off the front and Luke Keough, McNicholas and Adam Myerson (Cycle-Smart) breathing down his neck. Closer to the end of the race, the group lost (literally) its leader to a hard crash in the woods, followed by Myerson’s crash which allowed McNicholas to get back in the game after being off the back of the lead group. Keough paced himself to the win, followed by McNicholas in second and Myerson in third.
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