Race report... or... something report
 

TT - abysmal. Simply stated, I suckaged. My worst 3 minute 30 second power in months @ 394 watts. (62 watts off my personal best). Started too hard, not warmed up well.. all of it.

Crit - rolling start 1 lap, feeling ok. Second lap.. wow, lots of shoulders and elbows being thrown around today. Bumpity bump. Third lap, course narrowing, holding position (I'm in front of the guy trying to edge me off the left). His front wheel snags my rear wheel - holding on for dear life. He goes down, I'm upright... coolness (that I'm upright still - not that he went down). Turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left, turn left... um... something feels wrong... Turning right... oh that's smushy. Turning right again... yep, really smushy now. Look down, punctured rear. Damnit. Pulled off - member of opposing team offers me a wheel. Cool. Look at derailleur while pulling off wheel. Cable housing is shredded and cable is frayed. Screw that. DNF.

First mechanical in a race in 2 years of racing. It happens, I was upright, minimal injuries. Found out the guy that went down after running into me went down in the grass -he finished the race off the back but finished with no injuries to bike or person.

been there. at least it was early in race.

Ouch - sounds like a pretty disappointing race - at least the DNF was not your fault....

I've recently found out how dangerous crits are - scary stuff.

But it's December. It's snowing. Aren't you in Japan? Don't they have winter there Nomadsan?

Not for another month. It was a balmy 43F at TT time, but was prolly 52-55F by the time noon got here. Long autumn here - no complaining!

Supposed to be 80 today:)

A good fast crit with racers who know what they're doing is neither dangerous nor scary. I've seen plenty of Pro/1/2 races without a single crash, and many Cat3 races like that as well.

If there's a decent payout, teams will keep it honest, and the pace will remain high enough that unless someone gets a flat, crashes aren't a problem.

Too big of a payout will result in people taking stupid risks. Too little money will result in the field being bunched up, going too slow.

It's a bit crazy here in the UK for the lower ranked crits and there's no money involved at all! There's a lot of disorganisation...