This was my first criterium of the season in a 40+ age group category. My other crit, at CSU, was an open Cat 4/5 race, so I had to race with the "kids". In this race, I would be racing other Cat 4 guys, age 40 and up. For my category, this is a 40-minute race around a 0.8-mile course. I'm not sure if I've really explained criterium racing in this blog, but essentially it is a lot of short laps over a set amount of time. You race a bunch of laps until the officials determine your average lap speed, and then with somewhere around 5 laps to go, they start displaying a lap counter at the start/finish line, so you know how much farther you have to go.
I got to the race plenty early, and picked up my number from registration. After chatting with a teammate for a while, I got dressed and pinned my number on. I had a bite to eat, and started my warmup. I probably managed about a 20-minute warmup, continuing to eat and drink. It was a chilly morning, but I decided I would be working hard during the race, generating some heat, so I would wear the normal kit along with some arm warmers. Typically during a race, my legs are doing enough work to stay plenty warm, but the arms tend to just sit there, so I like to wear the arm warmers to make sure they don't get too cold.
As I was finishing my warmup, my wife and kids showed up to watch, which was cool. With two kids in spring sports, it can be tough to manage bike racing, soccer and football. I sometimes have to miss some races to go to games, and if I do race, it can be tough for them to come watch. But it all worked out for this race; football had a bye week, and soccer was right around lunchtime, so we could finish the race and head right to the game. And besides, crits are just fun to watch. It's fast, the racers pass by every couple minutes, and there tend to be crashes, if you're into that sort of thing.
After the previous race finished, I rode one lap of the course to get a feel for the turns, and got myself in line. Once again, I was kind of near the back, but wasn't too concerned about it. Forty minutes is a long time, and I didn't think I'd have much of a problem moving closer to the front within the first couple laps. After a review of the rules from our race official, the blew the whistle and away we went!
The first few laps were a little sketchy, particularly in the corners as we were still in a large group and had a mix of faster and slower racers. That means there were people who wanted to cruise quick and smooth through the corners, and those who maybe wanted to take it a little slower. That tends to mean a lot of unnecessary braking and people who aren't holding their lines. But after a few laps, the people who aren't cornering well tend to get weeded out, and you end up with a much more cohesive group. You generally take your laps with that same group for a while . . . until someone decides to make a move.
At some point during that first half of the race, someone took a flyer off the front. I never saw it happen, so I assume he broke away before I got up there. At certain times, I could see that lead rider and the lead moto up ahead, but I couldn't tell what team he was on. In my opinion, a single rider away that early in the race would probably burn himself out, and eventually get pulled back into the group without much effort, so I wasn't too concerned. But as a few more laps went by, and teammates on the sidelines were yelling out the gap as we rode by, I realized the guy was actually gaining ground, not losing it. If we were going to be fighting for first place, instead of second, we would need to work together to reel him back in. I started yelling to the group to pick up the pace and chase him down. I wasn't going to do all the work myself, so I was trying to get guys to rotate through the front as a paceline. And here I made my biggest mistake of the race . . .
As I mentioned, I couldn't see who was in the break. Maybe I could have asked the other riders at the front, but it didn't occur to me. As we completed laps and sped through the start/finish banner, I could hear the race announcer for a split second. It's hard to hear exactly what he was saying, but a number of times I heard him mentioning "RealD", another team in the race. I assumed he was saying that a RealD rider was away in the break. Looking around, I couldn't see any RealD riders with me, so I figured we should all be chasing. Unfortunately, misunderstanding the race announcer caused a big problem. It turns out the leader wasn't from RealD, but from Thump Cycling. And one of the riders I thought I was "working" with was also from Thump. I had spent much of the race riding behind him, starting into his seatpost-mounted GoPro. He had no interest in chasing down his teammate, or helping the rest of us do the same. So, while I was sitting there getting frustrated that our group wasn't making any progress, the Thump rider was doing exactly what he needed to do, taking it easy on the front of the pack, doing his best to disrupt any plans we had to try to speed up the race.
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| Out front for a bit. Looks like I'm breathing pretty hard. At the far left is Garrick Mitchell, the Thump Cycling guy who spent most of the race keeping us from catching his teammate. Photo: Brent Doerzman |
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| Still out front. Doing more work than I should be. Photo: Craig Perez |
With a few laps to go, it was obvious that the break was going to stay away. At that point, it became a race for second place. I decided to follow through on my original plan, which was to try to take a flyer on the climb at 3 laps to go. As we started the climb, I got out of the saddle and tried to put some distance between me and the rest of the group. I'm not exactly sure, but I think I spread out the group a bit, and made it through the start/finish line in second place with 2 laps to go. I stayed in this spot throughout the penultimate lap, and thought I was doing ok. I glanced back, and the rest of the field was still there, though. After the start/finish line, there is a long downhill, and I took the turns as fast as I could. I could see/feel one other rider behind me, and was hoping it was just us. But as we made the final turn and began to climb, I looked back, and saw that basically everyone was right there. And I had spent so much energy during the last half of the race that I didn't have a whole lot left for the climb. I did the best I could, and I'm sure everyone was somewhat tired, but as we climbed toward the finish line, they started to swarm around me. I gave it my best shot, but there was nothing left in my legs. I didn't even have the strength to get out of the saddle for the sprint. I rolled across the line about a second or two after the 2nd place finisher, in 14th place.
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| Think this might have been the start of the final lap. I had broken away from the main pack with this one other guy. But you can still see the pack back there, and they caught back up quickly on the downhill. Photo: Brent Doerzman |
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| Post-race run-down with teammates Gordon Smith and Robert Tarrall. Photo: Brent Doerzman |
Although the result wasn't what I was hoping for, it was a good learning experience. Since the race ended, I've been trying to thing of what I could have done differently. Some random thoughts on this race:
- I needed to be closer to the front at the beginning of the race. If I have been there, maybe I would have seen the break go away, and known who was in it. But I wanted to get in my pre-race lap to see the course. In the future, I won't wait until the break before my race to scout the course. I'll try to go earlier in the day, between some other races.
- I need to talk to other riders more. Maybe one of them knew who was in the break. I was just going by what I heard the announcer say as we crossed the start/finish line at every lap. I wouldn't have expected the guy's teammate to keep me in the loop about his plans, but someone up there probably knew something.
- Try not to do so much work so early. Other riders weren't helping, so I was trying to keep the group moving, taking too many pulls and spending too much time on the front. I mean, I knew this, but I also wanted to try to catch the break.
- When you're at the front of a pack, people tend to take your photos more often. Stuck in the middle of a group, you end up kind of nondescript, and it's harder to show up in pictures. There are usually a number of photographers at these things, and I seemed to show up in many more photos than usual this time. However, the pics I've included here are from friends and teammates, not the pros.
Race: Louisville Criterium
Category: MM 40+ 4
Result: 14/56
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