At the time it didn't seem like the moto ref even knew I was there, so I didn't want to risk having them crash me out a la Sagan et al.

Yup. A tiny cone, something was poking out of the road (manhole cover or something).

And of course on the last lap, guys on the front take us right over it, just because. We never got close to it until the last lap, I think they were hoping to surprise someone with it.

I didn't want to exaggerate. The car said 98 or something nutty but I figured that was because the car was sitting. It did say 98 for a while on the way home, but it was hotter at that point. I think 95 would have been safe to say, but "90+" is definitely accurate, so that's what I stuck with.

going to watch some of the vids tomorrow. I have to go to sleep.

My computer read 110 on the start line of the 1/2/3s later in the day. Skinsuit was a bad choice.

Nice course and good job mattm. I liked the grease finger shots.

A little late to this discussion, but Real Talk on data appended to race videos: it would be nice if it were easier to do, but on the large majority of amateur race videos I've seen it adds nothing of value anyway. It mostly clutters up the screen. And a lot of the time is isn't well-synced, so it's clutter AND wrong. Knowing speed and/or power at various times might be and often is interesting, so throwing it up on screen just at those moments or using captions would probably be better*. This is all relative to what most race videos are trying to accomplish, of course. But I just don't care how many watts the Cat 4 making this video is throwing down. I especially don't care what his heart rate is. I probably don't really care if the video was taken by a Cat 2 or a Pro, either, except at specific times when the videographer could draw my attention to it and make it clear why it's relevant. So yeah. Just some weeknight opinionating for y'all. :rolleyes:

*I realize that's what you're doing, I'm just using this as a jumping off point for the data overlay stuff. Not commenting on your video, matt!

I'm with TMB...do you really think the thought of going to near a cone to "surprise people" and cause a crash would ever cross our mind. No! That's was simply the fastest line as well as the inside line, which we are trying to protect.

Also, when you say we shut down breaks...you should have gone with some of those. We didn't want the race to end in a pack sprint. You also didn't see the guys in the breakway shut down the break at the Giro. They were driving the break, and it only got caught because we had to gun it in the last lap, lest some other team catches them first.

I wasn't at that race, but that **** happens all the time. The "fastest line" at Berkeley happens to be through the potholes where the lead guy gets a clean view and everyone else gets punished. At Suisun the "fastest line" happens to be right by the plastic bollards that scrapes everyone off your wheel and into the wind, etc...

Don't be offended, but don't be silly and deny that guys take the pack over **** lines all the time on purpose.

We take the best line for us. We don't ever say "Let's take it over to the left on this stretch so people might crash behind us" or "let's aim for this cone in the hopes of surprising people". What we do at the end of the race is take the line that allows us to protect our position at the front of the pack. We never purposely go over a ****ty line with the intention of causing people to crash.

After 30 laps of racing too, people should have an idea of where to good and the bad lines are.

we're all saying the same thing. TMB might have been on the front in the video, I didn't see that part, but everyone does it at just about every race.

Like I said in the video, in hindsight I wish I had gone with whoever that was from TMB.

But fwiw, at Suisun and Memorial Day, I recall TMB getting in breaks to shut them down. There were other races too.

I can't blame you guys for deciding which way you want the race to go and trying to make that happen - if other teams had the horse power & organization you guys do, we'd do that too.

But it's hard to tell from within the break, at the heat of the moment, what you guys have decided. I need an inside scoop!

Pretty cool narration of the Bay Classic Portarlington crit in Australia last week:

^ good vid.

Here's the first Early Bird crit from last weekend, featuring @Ygduf & @aaronmcd:


I lost, but it was a good workout!

Great last lap in the Aussie vid.


mattm that was a very disorganized bike race. Guys were all over the place!

my ass is so fat but that speedsuit looks slippery at least

@mattm you went from like 1.5k out!

Nice

Indeed. A mix of categories (pro through cat 3), no team organization, first race of the season. Chaotic.

Then again "organized" crits aren't that much different, just more people, it seems.

Probably about 1k too far out..

Hopefully as the season goes on at least the riders will be closer together while being chaotic.

Who is the Team USA guy with the helmet mirror?

how long until zwift video?

I noticed that too but I think it was just sunglasses trying to fall off his helmet.

Maybe you could come out and give us a clinic on proper racing?

Jest aside, I think the video might exaggerate the chaos of the race, at the front, when things were reshuffling. (since I didn't show the boring parts in the pack)

The pack surely had an organized thing going on, but the front of the race is often chaotic in my experience.

USA guy is Eamon Lucas - was pro for a domestic team last year, not sure what he's doing team wise this year. And yes those were glasses.

Anyway, dude is super strong.

Oh god hopefully that never happens.

Then again I've never zwifted so maybe it's cooler than I imagine.

I picture something like that Black Mirror episode.

:/ Just a lot more side to side air than I'm used to seeing. Maybe it's the camera, or that you edited it down to interesting parts.

At 2:48, what's happening there? Were those two guys trying to drop you, but decided to do it on opposite sides of the road? Or at 1:05, was that guy just seeing who was going to follow him across the road if it looked like he was thinking of attacking?