Gila Stage 4 - Crit

Another day, another race. Today was the criterium in downtown Silver City.


One of the great thing about Blue Sky Velo is that we have enough people to take up some space and set up a nice warmup tent. (I'll eventually post some pictures. Slight rant - Ross took some pictures with his Sony camera which uses its proprietary memory stick, and doesn't even have a standard USB interface. Screw you Sony!) We rolled up to the marking lot early coned off some spots for our other cars and our warmup tent.

The start line was a little hectic for me. I got to the start/finish area a little later than I wanted, and I still had to sign in. (In stage races you need to sign in.) The annoying race official wouldn't let me cross the road to sign in because there was still a racer on the road. A single racer. Nevermind she was like 3 minutes away from crossing the finish line. So lame.

Eventually I got signed in and ended up getting a spot in the second row. I had wanted to line up on the inside because there was a narrow corner shortly after the start line and I didn't want to get guttered on the outside, but I ended up being on the far outside. The race started surprisingly slow (I thought), and I easily made my way to the front of the race and took the narrow corner without an issue. It turns out that the corner wasn't as narrow as I thought it was, so the rest of the race it wasn't a problem.

The course was pretty non-technical. Only four corners. The main "feature" of the course was a climb between the 2nd and 3rd corners. The first couple times through this section were hard on my legs. After that, though, I was punching up it pretty easily every time.

I spent time all over in the pack - sometimes in the back, sometimes in the middle, and a few times I went off the front. It's common to have sprint laps in a crit where a prize is given to the first person across the line. They're called prime laps (pronounced "preem"). Coming up to the fourth corner on a prime lap, I managed to get off the front. It wasn't really my intention, but it just worked out. I thought it was a prime lap, but I wasn't sure since nobody else seemed to be contesting it. While I was off the front, Rob was behind me on the front of the pack doing an excellent job of blocking. I took the prime without even getting out of the saddle. My huge prize was a pair of socks and $20.

With 6 laps to go, Rob got a flat. Fortunately we were just coming up on the wheel pit, so he pulled in and got a wheel from SRAM neutral support. If you're going to get a flat in a crit, it's pretty sweet if SRAM is there to give you a ZIPP 404 carbon wheel. You're allowed to free lap in a crit if you have a mechanical, so Rob was able to hop back in the group the next time we came around. And boy did he ever come back into the group. I was near the front and Rob passed me going mach 1 through the outside of the first corner.

Towards the end of the race, people were riding really sketchy. I wanted to get around them and up towards the front, but I just could find good lines through the crowd. I think if I was more confident in the corners, I could have worked up to the front. I'm going to work on it. I normally don't even bother to sprint at the end of the crit because there's not much of a reason to sprint for 30 place (or wherever I happen to be placed). I decided to see how my legs felt today and I did some sprinting. I bet I passed a half dozen people in the final stretch, so that was cool.

I'm not sure where exactly I finished, but I was in the lead group. Rob unleashed a sweet sprint and took 4th.

We had someone take 4th in the 3's race too. Unfortunately, one of our guys went down hard on the last lap of that race. The initial stories I've heard were that somebody put a handlebar into Jeremy and took him out. (This guy had apparently been displaying some poor decision making throughout the race too.) Jeremy got some road rash, but he doesn't appear to have broken any bones. He hit the deck hard though, and cracked his helmet. As a precaution, they took him to the hospital. I'm still waiting to get an update. It's been a rough couple days for Jeremy after a terrific start to the race. I hope he can race tomorrow.