Last night in my third race I pulled such a dumb move that I wanted to post it here to help remind myself never to do it again.

It was the 4th race in a 10 race crit series. Closed 1.3km track, 4 turns with a small hill at turn 2. 40 min + 3 laps and about 35 people in the race. The 1st race ended in a field sprint which I won. The 2nd race a teammate of mine took a flyer at the bell and won, I won the field sprint for 2nd. 3rd race I crashed and wrecked my bike in the warm-up (argh). 4th race was last night.

Even after skipping a race, I was still ahead in the points standings but 2-4 were close. I marked those guys for the race and as in the 1st two races did as little work as possible. I never went to the front but stayed around the top 10, keeping an eye on things and watching for breaks. Other than bridging to a 10 man break at one point I stayed out of the wind the whole time.

There was a fair bit of a sidewind coming coming at the descent after 2 and headwind between 3 & 4. At the 3 laps to go mark the pace eased up as per usual and I made sure to move a bit closer to the front to keep a close eye for breaks. At the bell someone took off and I thought it was the guy who won last week and was close to me in points (turns out it wasn't, just same colour jersey). I didn't jump right away but when I saw the gap go out to 25m, it looked like he was getting away as everyone was looking at each other. At the top of the hill I made the decision to chase him down - about 500-600m to go. I spun out my 50x12 on the downhill and pushed hard into the wind to catch him. I didn't catch him but the pack did. At that point they were flying and I was going backwards.

I rode the track before the race and knew the windy sections and where I should be to position myself for the sprint. instead of following my plan I decided to chase down the flyer. I should have stuck to my plan to wait for the sprint. I know I have a good enough sprint that I'll finish high just by sitting in so I will do that in the future.

Also, I think I need some lessons from CPD on shelter. I thought I was doing well but my PM shows my AP @ 220, NP @ 240. The front of the pack was usually strung out a bit so I usually only had one wheel to follow. I could have gone further back to get more shelter but I feel safer at the front.