Mike Fraysse's Sports Camp (Housatonic, Conneticut State Championships)

[Guest blogger Sean Domitrovits will be telling us about his experiences at Mike Fraysse's Sports Camp ]

Everyone woke up to get an early start this morning, seeing as in we had to drive 2 hours.We all made it up to breakfast when there was a mysterious glop on the table which Mike called the breakfast of champions.As we made our way to the race, the team slept in the van and we made it to Connecticut. After arrival, i was surprised to see how many people had showed up for what i thought was a fairly small event.I'm not only going to mention that our team consists of three great riders,3 of which are 17-18, one of which rides for CBRC Jordan Strober, and the other traveled all the way from Argentina, Augustin Sebastian.After getting our numbers and fitting in some good spin time for a warm up, Mike Fraysse's Team made their way to the starting line. I figured the climbs were going to be harsh but i could have never imagined just 28 miles could cook my legs so quickly.So after our 9 minute neutralized SLOW climb up the first hill, WE WERE OFF.the pace began pretty quickly as the older juniors fought to shake off the 10-14 year olds and the other woman junior teams. We succeeded pretty quickly with some insane attacks from the field and people dropping off like flies.

After the first and worst hill of the race passed, nobody expected one of the juniors to attack at the top but he made it up the road and was able to shake the chase group off for about 12 miles.I should add that these hills would seem quick and painless at first, but once you thought you were at the top..it just turned into another incline of pain. By the time we were chasing this rider down there were only two of Fraysse's riders left in the mix.Cam and I tried our best to slow the pace down as much as possible on the climbs and used the flats for recovery.By this point there were 5 of us, and we finally caught the breakaway.As soon as this happened we were forced to jam up the last hill through attack after attack each of us itching for the KOM.of course i was the 2nd across the KOM line and was thinking more about recovery than merchandise.

At last it was just me and 4 other guys coming down the last decent and Cam Mancoso (one of three riders mentioned earlier) had gotten picked off before the KOM later to find out he almost caught back on with 400 meters to go.But as soon as we reached town, i was surprised to find that each junior in the breakaway pulled their own weight and everyone took their pulls with no problem the entire race.There were plenty of crowd to cheer the last guys standing as we rounded the last corner I made the mistake of taking the outside and ruined the sprint for myself but ended up getting beat by 200th of a second for 3rd.The last 200 meters was a sprint into a hill finish.So 4th place was what i had to settle with after protesting, but the climbing experiences here were like no other.Thats it for today as I get ready for up hill TT's tomorrow.Thanks

Sean Domitrovits