Oh dear :eek:

2 from 2. :D
Another drag race at the end, another new Max HR, another new top speed... quite a few Southern Vet riders there too.
I don't really have any tactics other than stay in the first 4-5, drive the pace a bit, do the odd attack and then go like stink at the sprint.
The other blokes in the sprint (5 of 'em) were drafting on to the straight but because I was at the tail and wanted to go around the corner a bit faster, I ended up doing what I did on Tuesday... go around the outside on my own and hammer. So they were on the left side of the road and I was on the right slowly reeling them in and passing them.
Just like Tues, I started passing them at a reasonable pace, noticed some starting to tire (it's a hell of a long straight) changed gear and seemed to take off.
I still haven't done a standing sprint... I can't imagine going any quicker at this stage (feels like my legs would fail when I try) let alone even get up on the pedals. Any tips on that?

Pedal hard and fast. ;)

It's no different to the sprints you're doing at the moment except the pack takes off from a crawl when the first guy blinks. Even if you legs are tired from a hard race you should have up to eight seconds of maximum power available when the sprint starts. Use it wisely. It'll hurt, but the pain is temporary.

Oh yeah, and well done on your second win.

Guess you'll be a marked man now! :)

Doing that. :)

The bell laps tend to go nuts and the sprints are taking off from 40+ km/h... today's was a good 20-25 seconds... for me anyway, I'm not sure how far the others went before they jumped.

So I needn't worry about standing when they start from a higher speed?

<edit> cheers Jock

hehe, a few wanted to see my birth certificate, and there were a few calls for "stick him in C" :D

Said they'd be watching what I do next week. I doubt they'll pick much up, I just pedal as hard as I can at the end.

So while they're expecting you to wait for the sprint why don't you try a few other elements of racecraft over the next couple of races:

the long, determined breakaway
short, savage, but half-hearted attacks
or my personal favourite, the 'block and run' (ie. leave an increasing gap to the main bunch then sprint across it leaving your foe behind)

you might not win, but you'll find out what you can and can't do in a race.

For high speed sprints everything happens/changes very quickly, so you need to be comfy and relaxed. That means grabbing the right wheel and draughting for as long as possible before exploding out of the line for the win. The gun riders can time it so they just step out and push 3 or four times to take the win!! It takes nerves of steel (ie. patience) to be able to do that. Practice makes perfect I guess.

Racecraft... I have soooo much to learn.
'long slow breakaway' would be the end of me I think. 'short, savage, but half-hearted attacks' tried that today and was surprised that I got 50 or so metres fairly quickly.
'block and run' sounds like fun... next crit :)

Another question, some bloke today kept sprinting up to us (4 of us were driving the pace) either pushing directly in front of me (when I was 4th wheel), or right up to the front and then backed it right orf and sat up. We just kept going around him. Did it about a dozen times.. was really giving me the irits.
Is there a point to doing that?

Yes, to give you the irits. :D

Crits have lots of niggle in them. If someone dun like you you'll sure find out about it.

Pushing you out is a common way of testing someone's nerve, very important in a tight sprint situation. If you let him push in he'll have you figured as a wallflower in a bunch sprint and will have no qualms pushing you out of the paceline if he wants/needs to.

By slowing down the guy was doing his best to get you to sap the energy out of your own legs. Enduro guys try every trick in the book to wear out the sprinters. It mostly boils down to lotsa hard accelerations or keeping the pace very high at the end of the race. By slowing down in front of you he was making you accelerate often, removing punch from your sprint.

Squeezing you out on a high speed technical corner is also a fave move of the experienced guys. It's all very safe if you both hold your line and don't tangle handlebars, but it's meant to put you off your game and out of contention.

He didn't do it enough then :D

Thanks fer the explanantion Jock... parts of the race make a bit more sense now.
re: the cutting in, having to go around him wasn't what annoyed me as much as wondering WhyTF was he doing it.
Once the pace was up pretty high, he tried it on me and I kept him out without too much trouble... 4 years of SuperSport racing taught me how to give someone a F*** O**!

I never realised all of this stuff went on. Naive I suppose.

Well done Odin, you seem to be doin' it a bit too easy. It's great fun though don't you recon? A bit like motor bikes but without the huge costs.

...or the throttle ;)

Thanks mate, yeah, it's awesome fun hammering yerself like that, and it's nice to be able to race without it costing 1K/race.
Dunno about doing it easy though, I'm going as fast as I can.

You racing this w/e?

E-Mail me your address and I'll send ya a sticker :D

Practice doing power drills- especially standing power drills.

Koffee

I'm from aussie my self.

yeye

so who are the new Club crit champs jock? You must be one of them hey?

Na, I slept in this morning :(. Wife had a bad nite = me not sleeping much so when the alarm went off, I rolled over :o I'll do the mundy nite crit at Penrith to keep the legs work'n. Ah, dinner by the lake with a nice Chard. :p

ugh what a bad weekends of riding that was. raced saturday arvo and was jsut totaly flat. had nothing. couple that with a rear derailer that was slipping gears like a bad automatic, having had somone dial in my suspension (at my request but it turned out to not be to my liking) and then all the above giving me the major poo's i just gave up at half distance and rolled around :(

then sunday morning to get the love back i decided to do the M2. woke up at 6, promplty went back to sleep. woke up at 8 again and decided to go for a roll around. did half an hour and packed it in on the road bike and decided to trade in for the mtb. jumped on that then 20 mins in, pretty much the point of no return and with a largish climb infront realised my water bottle had gone walkies....... tops!

Nope, not good enough in the end.

Strong field, hard race, blanket finish. Was sitting behind Steve Chapman and Paul Worby: perfect. Until Steve took a wild jump right, then left and Worbs went waaaay left to avoid him. Left me in no-mans land with no wheel and 40m to go. Oh well. 7th.

Don't even know who won, had to race off to littlun's first soccer game straight away.

did you at least win at the soccer?

Yup, 5 nil. And she scored two goals as well. Could be a future champion :lol:

Kids soccer is excellent fun to watch. Bedlam mostly. Very funny stuff.

My grandson Heath plays up there. Watched a couple last year. Funny as watching a bunch of 7yolds going around :) At one stage less than half the kids were on the field while the rest had formed a bunch off the sideline. Seems one of 'em found a frog. ha ha ha

LOL!
Where's thunder and ed with some razor sharp analysis of Paris-Nice or the Tirreno?