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What Richard saw:
Category: 4
Result: Mid-pack
The Wente crit was fun until the final few laps when things got
extremely hairy. That is one fast course and I think that counts as the
quickest crit I have yet ridden, averaging 26.1 mph for the 45 minutes.
The plan was for Scott, Ziggy and me to try to stay in the first 10
riders as long as possible and see where we were when we got closer to
the finish. I got a bad start off the line, failing to get away cleanly.
Still, I managed to move up pretty well on the first lap so I was close
to the front of the 90-rider field first time through.
I learned again how easy it is to get swamped if you stray too close to
the centre of the bunch. I would find a wheel and rest for a moment and
woosh! riders would overtake me on both sides and I would have to move
out to move forward again. The good thing was that this course did give
you plenty of opportunities to move forward, but this was a mixed blessing.
On one of my surges forward, I saw that the front had slowed a little,
so I decided to keep going and see what happened. Ziggy blocked like the
team-mate that he is and I and another rider got clear for about half
lap, but there was no way a move like that was going to stick, even if I
had had the legs.
With five to go, the race began to get sketchy. I had recovered
reasonably well from my effort off the front, but it was becoming
increasingly difficult for me to maintain my position. There were a lot
close calls with people moving over on others and especially in the "S",
8 riders trying to get into the space of 2, which doesn't quite work.
At about 2 and a half laps to go, I decided that the outside of the
bunch was getting too scary by half and moved to the inside. A prescient
assessment, as very shortly after I moved, there was a crash on the
outside. Unfortunately, Scott wasn't so lucky and came down, though he
came away relatively unscathed.
Going into the last lap, I moved up on the inside and succeeded in
getting to about 10th wheel, though as soon as I got there, I was
swamped again and there were some more sketchy things right in front of
me. I clearly didn't have the legs to fight for position at the front,
so I was content to let myself slip through the bunch to the finish.
A fun race and it will be nice when I am able to ride at the front and
stay out of all the crap which happens from about 15th place back.
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What Ziggy saw:
Category: 4
Result: Top ten
Warm-up, registration, blah blah. My race started off on a bad foot. A fat old guy from Lyon Real Estate decided that he wanted to come around me through a turn while I was first wheel, so instead of just coming around me like a normal person, he came beside me and pushed me out of the way in mid turn. I don't mind somebody putting their hand on me to tell me they're there, but this dude actually applied force to that hand and pushed me. I, and many other riders as I came to find out at the end of the race, have had problems with this guy in the past, so I try to stay out of his way.
So anyway, the race was pretty eventless. I rode the front of the race because I knew I had no kick. Steady power output was the name of the game that day, and it worked all the way until the end. As has been mentioned, the sprint is kinda long, and when I stood to give it some power, there was nothing. No real pain, just seriously dead legs. I went from about third wheel down to seventh as people overtook me. So I ended up with a seventh placing, just out of the money, but good enough for upgrade credit. BTW, the field had 90 riders. Oh, I almost forgot, I won the first prime of the day, a big bottle of Hammer Gel energy Gel. That was a cool sprint as I was able to ride the guy in front of me until about 100 yds from the line when I just slipped right past him.
I did make one big goof in this race. It came with about 5 laps to go. I had drifted back to maybe mid pack and was waiting for a ride up to the front when the guy next to me twitched, so I reacted and according to Richard, moved about four feet to the left. This was mildly ironic because it happened right in front of the Lyon fat guy that I said rode so crappy. He got all pissy and proceeded to come up to me, grab my arm, and give me an earful before pushing me away for a second time. Oops. At least nobody fell down. I hate riding in the bunch.
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