I registered for the category 4/5 field which lasts for 30 minutes. If you're not familiar with criteriums, they are usually very short lap circuit races that are determined either by a predetermined amount of time or number of laps. To read a little more click here.
As the race started I could feel the butterflies in my stomach that come with every race, but they were a little more pronounced as this was only my 3rd crit ever and had 8 right angle turns in the course. For some reason when I start a race, I have trouble staying at the front right away even if I line up at the front of the peloton. I'll have to work on that... Unfortunately, with all the turns in the course it made it a little tricky to make your way up in the peloton and I couldn't help but imagine that this must be what it feels like to swim with a school of barracudas. Lots of darting, changing direction and you can feel that everyone around you is hungry for the same thing.
10 minutes in and I was feeling fine, despite a very very poor month of training since my most recent prior race. However, before the race started I had made the unfortunate decision to watch the end of the Category 1/2/3 field instead of tightening my saddle after I had noticed that it appeared to be slightly loose. Had the course been perfectly flat, that wouldn't have been a problem; but as anyone in Minnesota knows our roads are very susceptible to the harsh winter months and there are very few roads without the bumps and repaired potholes that come from freezing and thawing for 6 months every year. Suddenly, one bump too many popped my saddle just loose enough so that it was pointing upward into that "soft fleshy region" that can be so uncomfortable after too many hours on a bike or after just a few minutes on a saddle that isn't right.
oops.
Nevertheless I soldiered on and even had enough in the tank to make an attack with 6 laps to go (at a certain point in a timed crit, the organizers calculate the approximate number of laps that will be raced and convert the race into laps). We turned south into the homestretch and I decided to jump hoping for a ninja prime. Ninja primes are a beautifully fiendish invention that are awarded to the leader of the pack at the finish of a lap without any warning. Traditionally primes are set at certain points in the race and announced as the lap starts. Unfortunately, what I couldn't see was that someone else closer to the front of the pack had jumped before me and was at least 50 yards out. I decided to kick hard, trusting my inner ninja, and crossed the line a bike length behind him. Sadly for me, I had guessed correctly and the lap was a prime lap, but I missed it by a bike length.
I then tried to get the other rider off the front with me to try and breakaway, but he looked at me as if I had spoken gibberish and floated back to the peloton. Out on my own with 6 laps to go I knew I couldn't go it alone, so I too drifted back into the pack.
Without any teammates, I did my best to stay towards the front, but had used too much energy to stay in contention. By the finish I sailed through to take 22nd place out of 39 finishers. It was a good night with some fun and mishaps mixed in. Thankfully no crashes and another chance to learn more about maneuvering in/with the pack. Most importantly I tried to spice things up and didn't just sit in and treat it like a training ride. After all who pays to go on a local training ride?
and since everyone else in the cycling world has probably mentioned it. I can't help but do the same. After watching the finish of Stage 4 of the Tour de Suisse, I'm just glad that my race didn't end like this...
