Historic University of Arizona Criterium: Race Report

It was a bit nipply, as Clark Griswold would say!  Twenty one degrees at my house when I left for the race this morning, and in the low 30's at race time.  Still, the sun was out, the course was pretty interesting, and, well, it's race day!

I always want to win, and am working on developing some instincts for racing criteriums that may help me win, but that's just it ... right now I'm trying different things.  Today my #1 goal was, do not crash.  In the first race on the day there were 7 separate crashes on the one tricky corner.  In my race, just one.  As the day went on and the road warmed up, the paint on that corner got less slippery, so that helped.

The second goal was to try some different break aways using features of the course and see if one sticks.  I felt good and believe that if I could've gotten away I had a good chance of staying away.

Thank you John Hays for the great pics!

 Spoiler, I didn't get away.  In fact, nobody did.  There were just a few guys shutting everything down.

The course:  0.8 miles long and starts slightly down hill headed east with a very fast pair of turns (numbers 1 and 2) that send you slightly back up the hill then a bend to the right and a very pinched and technical 150 degree turn.  This is where everybody crashed when it was cold.

The venue was very cool, on the UofA's campus.  The streets were pretty nice, grass everywhere, and palm trees.  There were a lot of spectators, making it a lot of fun.

When the race started I just wanted to stay in the front 1/3 of the pack, stay safe, do zero work.  My garmin ended up getting wonky on me, but from the data I collected, I did a good job not working at all when I didn't need to.

I am also happy to report that on the fast pair of turns on the east end of the race, I was faster than the other riders.  I guess because I could carry my momentum through the turn.  That same inertia hurt me more than it helped on the tricky, dog-legged turn.  I popped off over 1,100 watts twice, and over 1,000 repeatedly in the short 11 minutes interrupted data I collected.  All in that one corner, all just coming back to speed, not attacking.

It became very quickly apparent that whoever went into the last turn (the tricky one) first, would be the first to the finish line, provided they didn't slide out in the turn itself.  For one of the prime laps I was 3rd wheel in the corner and had no chance.  Each prime and the race itself was won by whoever was first in that corner.

If I had a time out during the race, or was smarter, I'd have changed my plan from a late break away to just getting on the front on the back half and pulling the whole field to that turn and gunning it out of the corner!  DOH!

During the race several guys tried to get away and none did.  I tried three separate times, and never got very far at all.  On the last lap I just tried to stay in front of the people in that were in the omnium competition.  I ended up coming in 4th in my category and 7th over all, and I did let one of the omnium competitors slip away, I didn't see him.  So, after day 1, I'm sitting in second place.

Here's the footage from my GoPro from today's race.  It was a lot of fun.  It was also nice seeing Rich Horn out there cheering me on!  What a teammate!

Tomorrow's race has a lot of climbing, twice ascending a long category 2 climb.  Who knows what surprises the day will hold!  I'm built for crits, not hills...but I ride hills not flats, so I'm comfortable when we go up and down.  I might surprise a few folks tomorrow.  Then again, I might get spit out the back right away.  We shall see!