I always spend a lot of time deciding whether or not to do a crit. It's a stressful event. Today I decided to line up for the Longmont crit and at least get some good exercise.
For the first time in a long while, I had 4 teammates in the field. I've gotten so used to racing solo lately that it's a little shocking to see another Blue Sky jersey in the pack.
I hopped off the trainer about 15 minutes before the race and had planned on taking a couple laps to check out the course. As I rolled up to the starting line, there were already at least 30 people lined up. Ugh. So I just lined up too. All told, we started with 80-90 people.
The race was fast, but I didn't seem to feel as worked as I have in other races. One of the things I wanted to do in this race was move around in the group a bit and get a little more comfortable. That worked out, and I was everywhere from the front to the back of that pack.
Some parts of the 45 minute race were faster than others, and I found those parts to be way more fun. It would string out the group a bit which made going through the corners safer. Inevitably, though, the pace would slow back down and the people who were barely hanging on got a chance to catch back up.
With 3 or 4 laps to go, the group really sat up, I guess in an attempt to save something for the finish. The last few laps of a SM4 crit are always sketchy, and having a big group didn't seem like a fun idea. I drilled it on the finishing straight to string things out. At first, I was just going to go to the front and take a long pull, but for some reason I just decided to attack. I led for a lap or so and then waited for someone to pull through when they caught me. Alas, they just sat on my wheel, content to let this big group come down to a field sprint.
On the last lap, there was wicked crash in one of last corners. It must have taken out 10-15 people. Looked scary. I was far enough behind that I avoided it thankfully and finished 22nd. Then it was straight to the Left Hand beer garden for a couple free brews. Nice recovery drink.
Do the BS members (snort) work as a team if multiple show up?
ReplyDeleteIdeally yes, in reality no. At this level of racing, the ability levels are widely different usually. Especially in a team like ours that isn't focused on racing. That being said, though, with 5 people racing, we managed to put 4 in the top 25 in a very large field. Perhaps we could have done some damage riding like a team, but I really just went into it wanting to get some crit confidence back.
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