Originally Posted by ttusomeone

Nice job. To add my report from the same race, for the first time in a few crit races I wasn't the idiot who couldn't clip in (finally figured out why I only was having trouble getting clipped in at races and no where else - my initial first half pedal stroke was too hard and it was causing my pedal to spin before I got my foot to it). Of course, when I can't get clipped in first try I just pedal like that to get up to speed and then clip in to not lose too many positions or screw up the people behind me. Back to the actual race, I sat in for most of the first half of the race staying within the top 4 or 5 positions. At halfway I saw a guy go solo and he stayed out for a few laps. Another strong guy (who just moved to 4s from the 5s where he was winning pretty much everything) bridged up to him and they started pulling away a little more. No one in the field was reacting and breakaways have worked before this year when it was windy like last night, so with 10 minutes to go I decided this may be the winning break so I bridged up to it. It was the hardest bridge I've ever done. It was solo with a strong wind and it probably took me two and a half laps to make it. Once there we started working together some and we had about a 12 second gap on the field from what people where telling us. We were all getting tired and our group of three started to fall apart some and I could see the field charging. We were caught with 2 1/2 laps to go. I was able to jump into the front of the field and was actually third wheel going into the last lap (on the wheel of the guy that's been winning all the cat 4 crits). When they went on the last stretch before the finish I didn't have the kick to stay with them and got gaped (the bridge took too much out of me). I was still able to manage 7th in the sprint though. There's just something about seeing a break and convincing myself that it's going to work that makes me bridge up.