subcultro

Well that was a fun one. It was definitely a good time and I got to learn a few things along the way. There's not much of a story. I got lost because the directions on the flier were wrong. Got to the race at 8:45 am, signed in, and basically went straight to the line. Race started at 9am. The course was a short 3/4ths of a mile with four 90 degree turns. Our Cat 5 race was 25 minutes plus 1 lap.

So with no warm up at all, I sprint out the first lap really hard. I was in the top ten for the first lap and of course was immediately at the back of the pack by lap 2. By lap 3 I had been dropped, and by the last lap, I had been lapped. So it was a lot of solo riding. I had a massive 2nd to last finish (My goal was just not to finish last, so I'm happy). Here are a few things I learned along the way.

1) Double check you're directions, dumbass. I will never again blindly trust the flier. I found myself almost 25 miles away from the race before I realized I was no where near it and turned back around. Not being able to warm up and check out the course sucked ass.

2) Don't sprint out at the beginning unless you know you're good enough to solo out from the start. Of course the best idea is to sprint out the start especially when you haven't warmed up, right!??! Wrong. Maybe it was the jitters, maybe it was because I didn't want to fall behind from the start, but I went out WAAAYYY too hard. Stayin mid pack and seeing what everone else was going to do would have been the best option.

3) They're going to yell at you. I knew going in that if I did something stupid they would yell at me, so theres no excuse. But DAMN, it was as if Botto was behind me screaming the entire time for trying to pop wheelies around the turns the entire time =). It wasn't so much yelling at just me, just yelling at everyone in general.

4) People will cheer for last place as much as they do first place. The crowd was, in general, very supportive of my solo off the back effort. Always encouraging me not to give up and to keep going. It made me smile everytime I would go by this group of 5 year olds and they'd scream for me every single lap.

5) Races are effin fun. I loved every second of it and do not regret (well, maybe not warming up) any part of the race. If I knew going in that I would get last place, I would still do it all over again.


Overall, I thought I was way more jittery before the race than I needed to be. I was really nervous, but it ended up pretty good and I had a lot of fun. For all of those that have always considered racing but were too afraid to, get out there. You wont regret it.

NoRacer

^^^^^^ Dude! Don't you read this forum? Apparently, I didn't either, because I did the same crazy $hit. There's a LOT of stuff in this forum about how to do a crit the right way. Read, assimilate, execute.

Regardless, it's cool that you had fun and learned from the experience.

DrPete 

How the hell was this crit organized that you somehow rode 25 miles away from the course and didn't catch on?

(edit) Oops... nevermind. You were talking about the flyer, not the flyer.

ElJamoquio

Apparently I didn't, either. I made almost every mistake that I knew not to make. Relax, OP, you have plenty of 'experienced' company.