Louden Swain and Ray Kinsella

There are several things that you need to bring with you on race day: your kit, your bicycle and your desire to succeed.

This may sound kinda silly, but most racers just want to finish without getting dropped or have their names not appear too far down on the results page when their friends look them up on Monday morning. However, if you go into the race with the concentrated thought towards an actual goal, that is more likely to happen. A simple mantra of "I want to win this race" or "this time I will beat my PR by 5 minutes" is sometimes all it takes.

This past weekend was the Nutmeg Criterium in New Britain, CT. The race also served as the CT State Criterium Championships. Although not necessarily a sporting powerhouse, CT is important because to succeed in cycling in New England is no easy feat. My goal of the race was to win the masters gold medal and to the start line I headed.

With attitude being everything, I backed into the first row on the start line. No sense in starting last I thought. This course was neither difficult nor easy, but field finishes can be tricky as the course is fast and rarely is there a selection. The finish straight also comes off of a weird off-camber corner downhill thing that can sometimes be dangerous and more likely VERY tricky to read correctly. I knew in order to score I had to be off the front.

At just three laps into the race the prime bell rung for $10. A few guys went off the front for it and I had my plan. I sat in the field waiting for them to get a gap that would not be caught before the lap line; and then went after them hard. It took a half lap, but I caught them with two others in tow. The first two exploded and we were gone. A few laps later 4 other guys came up from the field in a hard bridge. They were definitely going to catch us so I sat up from the attack to catch my breath for a few seconds, get a sip of water and then got onto the chase group that quickly caught the front. Same result, less effort.

We put a solid gain into the field despite a concentrated chase from the teams that missed the move over the next 16 laps. Nice. There were a few scary attacks in the last two laps, but I was able to get on them and make a sprint move at the finale. I got beat by 3 riders, but they were from NH and NY, so the State Champ was mine. Nice.

I had simply envisioned my result before the race and achieved it. Maybe if I had wanted the race win I could have scored better, but that was not the goal.

Have a Vision Quest. Build It and He Will Come. Whatever it takes, get that goal, get that score.