To the editor:

Being a resident of the downtown neighborhood, officing at Ninth and Massachusetts the past 16 years, I’m left with two thoughts about the Collegiate Road National Championships, which took place last weekend in Lawrence.

First, it was terribly inconvenient. Friday morning, I’ll estimate blocked streets cost me at least two minutes getting into the office. I had deadlines to meet, and it was a real pain, throughout the day, to get work done with all the noise and crowds in the street below. Several times I left my desk and went to the window, and worse, on three occasions, found myself on the street watching as packs of cyclists streaked across the finish line.

Surely we should be reluctant to allow activities that are so disruptive of the quiet and solitude of our downtown district. As a city, we should protect our downtown merchants from disruptive intrusion by crowds of out-of-town strangers. It’s just wrong that any city resident, let alone a city employee, should be inconvenienced by crowds and blocked streets when running personal errands to downtown stores.

Second, it was refreshing to watch true amateurs, kids who are students first and primarily, participating, apparently, in a club sport (I never saw any reference to the NCAA, or its emblem), competing for their schools, and for the sake of competition itself. I hope they’ll come back next year.

Bill Skepnek,

Lawrence