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I should probably stay away from crits. Today was the first of a series of crits in at a race track in Mead, CO, and since I had some crit type stuff in my training plan I decided this would be a good training race.

In case I haven't done it previously, maybe a little explanation of a criterium is in order. Criteriums (or crits) are on a relatively short course with lots of corners, and due to the short nature of the races, they're usually pretty fast. To spice things up a bit, they also have sprint laps (or primes) where they award points or prizes to the top x people to cross the line.

The beginning of the race started out pretty good. The start wasn't quite the all out sprint that I experienced in my last crit, but it was sufficiently fast enough to make me glad I did some good warm up. I settled in with the middle of the pack and figured I'd stay there for the majority of the race. Then came the first sprint lap. I hadn't planned on contending for any points, but it was like everyone else was afraid to sprint. I was on the outside of a corner and I felt everyone slowing down, so I just went for it. Even though I had to shift to my big chain ring (and my chain was slipping as I was trying to do this), I blew everyone away. I even stopped pedaling 10 feet before the line.

The rest of the race I played with positioning. I wanted to see how I could work my way through a pack, and find out where I could pick up pick up a few places. I even tried creating a gap in front of me (so I could possibly help out a teammate in the future by giving him a few extra seconds). It was actually quite fun.

On the first corner of the very last lap, some numskull decided he would take the corner from the inside out, and therefor come in front of me quickly. Unlike my last crit crash experience, I didn't stand a chance and immediately went down. Hard. I slid a little bit, and also had another rider go over me. It's really not as bad as it sounds, but I'm good and scraped up and I'll be sore for several days that's for sure. Next time I ride a crit I think I'll stay in the back just so I can finish on without crashing.

Despite the crash, it was a positive race:
* I won my first sprint lap
* I spent some time at the front of a race for the first time ever
* I got some good experience positioning myself in a group