McRae Third At Roswell

Three was the magic number for Team Type 1's Jen McRae this past weekend as she once again finished behind Tina Pic (Colavita/Sutter Home) and Brooke Miller (Team TIBCO) at the Historic Roswell Criterium.

Roswell, Ga. – Team Type 1’s Jen McRae scored her second straight podium placing of the weekend Sunday when she finished third at the Eighth Annual Historic Roswell Criterium.

Five-time U.S. national criterium champion Tina Pic (Colavita/Sutter Home Women’s Cycling Team) won the 55-minute race ahead of Brooke Miller (Team TIBCO).

McRae also finished third at Saturday’s Athens Twilight Criterium in Athens, Ga. – a race Miller won ahead of Pic.

McRae’s back-to-back podium placings came in her first two races of the season.

“It was the same people on the podium both days, so it shows who the top sprinters are,” McRae said. “But we’re not going to be happy with being third again. We definitely want to improve on that. I think the whole objective of riding with the team this weekend was dialing in the team dynamics.”

Team Type 1 Women’s Director Jack Seehafer said McRae’s performance definitely shows the squad’s potential in criterium racing.

“She’s got to fine tune her training to just get the last part of the sprint down,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes when she and Jackie (Crowell) come back next weekend.”

McRae and Crowell will miss the next three nights of criteriums in the USA CRITS Speed Week series, but will return next weekend to join Monique Hanley, Veronica Leal, Morgan Patton, Samantha Schneider and Kori Seehafer. Up next is Tuesday’s Beaufort Memorial Criterium in Beaufort, S.C., followed by the Downtown Walterboro Criterium in Walterboro, S.C. on Wednesday and the Spartanburg Regional Criterium in Spartanburg, S.C. on Friday.

“We’ll use the next couple of races to start fine tuning things,” Jack Seehafer said. “We’ll look at setting up Morgan and Monique to do some attacks and lining Samantha up to do the sprint.”

The Team Type 1 women also scored their 19th victory of the season Sunday when Alison Powers beat Canadian time trial champion Anne Samplonius for the first time to win the Haystack Mountain Time Trial in Boulder, Colo. Powers was 30 seconds faster than Samplonius over the 16.5-mile (26.5 km) course.