umd

3s were only a little better today

jmechy

People were giving me crap today because I didn't go to that race, asking me if I'm still racing bikes. Yup, and I will be next weekend too thanks to the fact that I skipped today, not sure they can all answer the same way.

umd

How is pfaff doing?

btw, the two riders in the ground in front of me are both bf members. agoodale and mkadam68.

Crash716

I didn't think the course was that bad...i was more frustrated with guys shooting up the inside and then opening gaps cause they couldn't accelerate out of the corners. I had an asthma attack with 16 minutes to go and spent the next 5 min throwing up in a parking garage. I always use my inhaler before races and for some reason i did not today...I am an idiot. I felt really good today too. ohh well..there's always next year and a really good friend of mine won so...it's all good.

[edit] umd, Aaron (agoodale) is good..i think he might have gotten a little road rash but he's good. Our Cat 3 team has taken some beating this year. I've gone down, Ben has gone down 3 time (lost a frame and a set of zipps) and Aaron has been down twice at least.

danahs

the 30+ 3/4 was actually really fun... and this is coming from someone who hates crits. the maturity level and bike handling skills (and maybe because the field was only about 40 riders) was in a different universe compared to the cat 4 race.

at least my aluminum hellafaster survived my crash (minus the front wheel).

bostongarden

Major ow!! Hope all are ok.

kudude

sj memorial day e4 crit:

wide open, 70+ starters, sketchy going 7 wide into all the turns. Two laps in there was a crash in front of me in a turn. I had nowhere to go as there was curb to the left and 5 racers to the right. So I rolled over a wheel. I unclipped, but don't think I touched my foot to the ground. Had slowed to 6mph (ptap data) and then put in a 475W 1' to get back into the field. I might have been able to take a free lap, but I figured I could catch them.

finished ~20th, it was a short race

SalsaPodio

Quad Cities Criterium - Cat 4

8 turn, 3/4 mile course, extremely flat. Field of 52. They staged us by the order we registered in, so since I registered the day of the race I started pretty far back. Took me 3 laps to work my way up to the front. The fourth lap I attacked and got a little bit of a gap (4-5 seconds). I knew I couldn't hold it, but was hoping a few people would bridge and help me out. No one did, so I let up and got back into the field. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I had a little trouble moving up, and sat up after the last turn because I didn't feel like sprinting for 12th-20th and causing a crash. Ended up getting 17th. I don't really care about how I finished, it was just a really fun race.

Question for everyone: When I attacked and waited for some people to try and bridge, is there a better way to do it? There were a lot of turns and no real opportunity to talk to people and see if they would want to attack with me. I didn't have any teammates in the race either. I thought about attacking after a prime, but some lady kept ringing a bell at the last corner and I couldn't tell which lap was a prime lap. What would you have done differently in my situation?

AlexTaylor

Won.

SalsaPodio

Damn, thats what I forgot.

Hida Yanra

the better way to do it is to not let up and get sucked back in.
if you've spent the effort to get out there, fight and fight to hold it.
Also, in Cat4 races, the odds of anyone bridging up to you is exceedingly low. Heck, I'm an attacker and I wouldn't try to bridge up to anyone unless I already knew them OR they had a gap that was +10 seconds.

Keep going for it, you'll get better/stronger/smarter about when & how you do it.

ILUVUK

Quad Cities Criterium..Cat 5. My first crit. i learned a lot today. missed my clip in and the field was gone. i wasn't even remotely successful in trying to get back in the pack. got into a group of four that were also off the back, and simply finished the race.

save10

That was you that ran over the wheel?! I was right behind you and almost ran into the back of you. (nice bike handling to ride over the wheel and keep going...i thought you were done for). I unclipped and had to stop...got gapped and tried to catch on. but me and the guy behind me couldn't get back...just too far. Neither of us understood the concept of free lap rule and pulled out of the race. I had it explained to me afterwards.....i could have taken a lap and got back on. rookie mistake. live and learn.

45suited

Did 35+masters on Saturday in Somerville and Bound Brook on Sunday both were pretty fast and did nothing better than field finishes (finished just out of the money on Saturday). This is my first year of racing and I realize I got a lot of training to do to contest races with cat 1/2 guys. Overall, I hung in there but need to work on my high end training. Definitely thinking about getting a coach.

grolby

Heck, last week I had two guys come with me on an attack, and they wouldn't work when we had a gap. Any break in Cat 4 is a crapshoot.

Racer Ex 

Won the 40+ Windy 100 crit Friday night in a two up sprint out of a break.

Saturday 100km Roadrace...winds about 20 MPH. Got my guy safely in a 5 man break then started getting attacked by what was left of the big OK club. Started attacking back to return the favor and went OTF when the guy I was chasing off the front went the wrong way, I turned the right way but several of his teammates thought he knew better. Ended up getting caught by three man chase group; attacked immediately and went OTF for another 20 minutes until a 4 man chase group caught me...same three and a Cat 3 who had dropped out of the 1/2/3 race that I had passed earlier. Claimed he wasn't working with them. Whatever. Passed guy who had blown out of our races break. Ended up whittling it down to another two man sprint, won that so 5th, my guy missed 2nd by an inch.

Sunday did the 50+ crit as a warm up, attacked a bunch but only one guy was willing to pull through so we ended up with a kinda field sprint of what was left...I went early knowing one guy was sure to beat me. Gambled and lost so 10th, which made some people's day...overheard more than one "I beat Racer Ex" comment.

40+ race was much better, actual racing. Got teammate up in 4 man break, then bridge with two guys from our rival team. Much tactical fun ensued, sent my guy off with their sprinter with 5 to go rolling the dice that he might be able to burn him off and knowing they wouldn't let me go with him. The other 5 of us had a little knife fight, took second out of that sprint so 4th, my guy didn't burn out the sprinter so he got second.

Won one, made some cash, and got the sock puppets all wound up. Other than the 50+ race, which was tedious, had some fun racing in there.

kudude

Hey, thanks for not hitting me . I definitely had the thought as I got on the brakes that I might get slammed into. The only reason the free lap rule crossed my mind was............for the same reason you won't miss your opportunity next time. That's one particularly good way to learn, and it's definitely the hard way.

umd

That sounds almost exactly how my race went...

johnybutts

Texas State Championship Criterium... Dallas.
Lined up "late" - 20 minutes prior to the start, got me seated for ~50th of around 80 riders. The first half was absolutely brutal. I couldn't make up spots, kept closing gaps as people in front gave up, etc etc...

With half the race left, the pace chilled, but I still couldn't make it up to the front. The course was really technical, which i'm learning is a weakness of mine. A guy I ride with started pointing out lines to take, and I started making up positions well.

5 laps to go.
4 laps to go.

I start moving up... into good position... I'm on the front... "2 laps to go!!" I attack..
I've got 50 meters. Look back, this guy (another team, but a friend is on the front) I give it EVERYTHING. come around to the start finish...
"2 laps to go!!"
Oh sh1te!
Keep going, I've given it everything
"1 lap to go!!" still off the front, by a decent margin.
They're closing.
Caught with 1/2 lap left. I burned my match too soon.

Racer Ex 

You gotta roll the dice sometimes. Good try. I love that course, won there 2 years in a row. I understand they took the top part out which made it even more technical than this year.

brianappleby

Superior Morgul Road Race near Denver/Boulder CO. It's a long report so I put it in a blog post w/ pictures:

https://physicsofsuffering.blogspot.c...-pictures.html

Some pertinent info, I'm on a red Cervelo and have tattoos. My team is Primal, and we're in jerseys w/ white stomach red chest, black shoulders.

Here is the text cut & pasted. I've taken a lot of heat about being a "team player" recently, so there's a lot of that in the post...

Monday, May 31, 2010
Superior Morgul Road Race, with Pictures!
The short story, we dominated this race. There wasn't a single moment where there wasn't a primal rider either off the front, sitting 2nd or 3rd wheel, or both. Now the long story:

The neutral rollout was mostly, well, neutral. I started in the very last spot so I had to hustle around a bunch of people to get to the front before the weird roundabout corner. Here we are going around that corner together. (Click for bigger pictures)
If you clicked, you saw that Garrett, Myself, and Dan were all in the top 10 around the first corner, and leading up to the hill the first time. Suydam wanted to push it up the hill to test the pack, and he made us all suffer. Seen here:
I'm suffering, Garrett isn't, but lots of the people behind us are suffering too. We didn't manage to break anybody off here, but we're establishing our presence, and making people hurt.

Shortly after we crested "THE WALL," Suydam attacked solo on the rollers over the ridge. He was only off the front alone for a few minutes until the pack caught him, but primal was watching the front the whole time, and made it known that everybody chasing was working for us now. After Suydam got caught, there was a descent (seen here):
How do you like that lineup? Can you guess which way the wind is blowing?


"Be at the front, not on the front" *****es. Crosswind means that both me and Suydam are drafting. Guy in the blue Duke jersey has no idea what's coming.


There we go...

When the pack slowed on the other side of the descent, Suydam waited all of 2 minutes before he attacked again. A very well timed attack actually, it put him in front of a group off the back of the P12 field, so very few people in our group even noticed he was gone. Shortly after, 3 others bridged, and one of them took Thor Lochell with them, so now there was a lead group of 5, with 2 Primal members. Back in the pack people were doing a fair amount of effort to get them back. Most of the work was done by Matt Benti, his Rio Grande teammate, and a guy in some jersey with a jesus cross on the back.
Here is Garrett's group crossing the finish off the front for the start of lap 2:

He was off the front for about a lap and a half and we caught his group on the roller just before we got back to the wall.
Here I am trying to hurt the people who were working to get Suydam's group back:
None of them are around. Good job Suydam. Sidenote: the 14y/o garmin kid behind me is a beast, and ended up in 2nd place...

On the rollers after the hill, I tried to get a group going but everybody was apparently too tired from chasing Garrett down. After the feed zone hill I attacked in slow motion. I just sort of rode off the front. Cadence: about 7 RPM. I looked back to a 20m gap and saw that the pack was 8-wide, which meant nobody was chasing. Woohoo! I buried my head and let the suffering commence. By the turn onto HWY 93 I had a 20 second gap and it just kept growing. While off the front I got encouragement from Mark Agcaoili and Garret Davis. I also saw plenty of Rob Helton, who was supporting DFT and rooting for Primal. I was off the front for a lap and a half. The way the time gaps were growing, I knew Suydam and Jesus (baby, not jersey) must have been keeping the chase efforts to a minimum. Here I am alone on one of the descents:
Cancellaric, if I do say so myself.


By the time I got to the base of the final "THE WALL" the moto told me I had 2 minutes. I spent the rest of the climb wiping the snot off my face so that I'd look presentable at the finish line. Would they cheer? Would I get my picture taken, my name announced by the wildly excited announser guy? Sadly, no. Nobody except Michelle and Helton realized I was off the front of the 3's field and not off the back. I zipped up and gave my salute anyway. I realize this was quite possibly as good as it's ever going to get, and I enjoyed it as much as I could.

As much fun as it was to win a race solo off the front (****ING AMAZING), I realize that this was a team effort. Suydam's work in the first 2 laps is the only reason I was able to escape. The fact that I was allowed to stay away, and gain time for the rest of the race, is a testament of how well Primal controlled what was left of the pack.

Next up: Dead Dog Destruction. Let's do this.

ZeCanon

35+ 3? Because I know a guy (the Rio guy in most of your photos actually) who thought he won that race. Maybe won the field? Or did the 35's and 3's race together, scored separate?

Regardless, well done! Tough course.

johnybutts

Yep, the course was really fun - difficult, but fun. If I had paid attention to lap cards I'd have had a REALLY good chance at a state championship. Oh wells. I did get the $60 cash prime though - that paid for gas.

Lessons:
It's hard to pay attention when your mind is pre-occupied with positioning and cornering concerns.
Actively look for better lines, don't accept the line in front of you.
Driving to Dallas/Fort Worth for a 45 minute crit is only worth it if you win.

boka

I saw your helmet cam in the pack. I couldn't believe a couple of the stupid crashes coming out of turn 3. I felt ****ty, ran out of water, and watched the final 4 laps from the finish line. You should have seen the dude hit the haybails head-on at full speed in the last corner.

brianappleby

Raced together, scored seperately. Your guy was most likely the first 35+ 3 across the line, but I was the first of our (mixed) starting field. I don't know his name, but I do know Benti, and both of those guys are super strong, and willing to work.