Won the Sky Express p1/2 crit last weekend! Nice to get my general seasonal goal ("win something") out of the way so early in the season. Sky Express is the Red Kite race but rebranded - different promoter, same course. Field was 40-something, pretty good for this race.
We had six guys, the biggest team, so the pressure was on us to win. And the pressure was on me to sprint at the end of the race if it came down to that.
Vegan Cyclist's new "Ride Bikes Bro" team was there with a new guy that recently won a local crit, so he was a guy to watch. He's a breakaway kind of guy so I was all over almost every one of his attacks.
Nothing got away (even though we & Ride Bikes wanted a break, it seemed) so it came down to more or less a field sprint. The fast guy from Ride Bikes was otf for the last lap by maybe 5 seconds, and I got a mini-leadout from a teammate in which we jumped a leadout train coming in to the penultimate corner. I had to brake going in to that corner and then we came out of it slow, and I was freaking out thinking we're about to get swarmed..
The guy was still solo otf so I figured it was either get swarmed and battle for 2nd, or go WAY EARLY (~600m to go) and see if I can catch the guy otf.
I went early and caught the guy at the last corner, then came around him for the win. Boom!