Well, this was the first crit of my Superweek P/1/2 career. It was a very simple course. It was 4 turns with a very tiny chicane on the third corner. The finishing straight was about .6 miles long, the first corner turned onto a super bumpy road that kinda made the “saddle area” (according to Seth Meyer) ache. The field would always take a rest on the backstretch and then would pick it up in the chicane on the third side.
I started in the middle of the pack and at the start was pushed to the back very quickly. I’ll have to learn to hold my position in these things or try and move up right away. The race was pretty fast for the first half of the race until a break got away. I don’t quite know when that happened seeing that I was watching the whole field in front of me. I started learning quickly, though, how to move up easily. I made up a lot of time and spots in corners. However, I would move up about 10 positions...look back and see only 3 guys behind me. So I would move up 10 more positions, but yet again I would look back and only see 3 guys behind me. Funny thing is...the guys I were passing were not passing me back. So...I was moving up and people were dropping off. I was trying to make it at least to the middle of the pack, but the middle would always become the back when I would finally get there.
Everytime we got to the finishing straight the peloton went as hard as it could and I understand why. They did a prime pretty much every single lap. A couple times I shouted to myself “stop the primes”. But nah, there’s another 100$ prime. Oh well, this is making me stronger and faster, right?
With about 10 laps to go...I feel a little looseness in my handlebars. 3 laps later, my handlebars are extremely loose and I’m turning them up and down with ease. I knew I couldn’t take a free lap though just because something is “loose” on the bike. It was probably because all those bumps on the 2nd side of the course. I kept going...but couldn’t get out of the saddle to sprint. I was able to stay in the saddle and motor, but I knew I had no chance in the final sprint. So with 2 laps to go I fell off the back of the pack and rolled in by myself. I didn’t want to crash or crash anyone out. I still went as hard as I could and gave a good effort to finish the race. I placed 113th. Last of the finishers...oh well, at least I can say I finished my first p/1/2 superweek crit seeing that Karl Menzies, Rock Racing, Peter Dawson, “The Terminator” Viktor Repinski, and other big names were there.
3 races down....7 to go.....
Ciao ciao....
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