Back in 2005 I raced the Housatonic Hill road race cat 3 race.  A pretty long cat 3 race at around 54 miles with a bunch of climbing each lap.  The finish not part of the race course and the finish only goes up there,  it is a longing climb up to the finish.  This race is relatively not the memorable for me,  I had a good result and the race was tough,  up until this here moment I had not even thought about this race but then I read about the passing of Paolo Zenoni,  I met him them day because we suffered and worked together to get away from the peleton and attempt to bridge to the break.

The race started out pretty mellow,  but up the first pitch of the day a group rolled off the front of 4 riders,  it was given a leash and usually they come back,  but on this day it did not.  So,  with one lap to go I attacked and just went for it,  an suicide attempt to bridge to the break which was coming back but was not going to come back.  After I separated myself from the 78 other riders I looked back and noticed a rider coming across,  I stayed steady and he eventually caught me. It was Paolo Zenoni,  he came through and worked as hard as we could to the base of the finishing climb. We were both evenly matched,  we knew the front was gone so we started to race for 4th and 5th.  I attacked and he came with,  a brief moment and he went,  I followed.  He went again and I followed again,  I immedietly went again,  but no chance,  he threw in one more and I was done,  I tailed off and rolled in behind him.

After the race he came up and introduced himself and we chatted a bit,  he had an Italian accent but spoke great english. From that day on all the races I did I chatted it up with Paolo and we always laughed a bunch.  We can up in the same fashion,  upgrading to 3′s and 2′s in the same time frame. Once we became cat 2′s I saw less of Paolo and eventually I never saw him again.

I recently read about him passing on on Fincraft Coaching and it made me sad,  so cheers to you Paolo and for a great race some years ago.