Because Kari was racing her first crit ever this morning, we had to get down there really early with the women's race being the third race of the day and my race occurring several hours later. Kari has raced a road race before and she has some "track" experience racing Little 5 down at IU, but she has never raced a crit. Personally, I think a crit is about the most fun you can have on a bike. Due to the cold temperatures, Kari had to borrow some of my thermal clothing, including my Purdue thermal jacket. She looked great at the starting line waiting for people to line up in black and gold.
While Kari missed out on jumping in with the girls who got in the breakaway, tactically, Kari raced a very smart race. She stayed right with her rivals and worked with them to maintain a solid pace. Once the official announced 3 laps to go, Kari decided that it was time to work and drop her competitors. It worked because she rolled across the line with about a quarter lap lead on the second place rider in her category and took 4th overall in the field. Nothing more exciting that winner your first crit by a large margin knowing that you left a lot of gas in the tank. She will definitely be rocking it out this summer in the bigger races!
Kathleen also raced with Kari in the Women's Category 4 and took 3rd in her first ever race! Unfortunately, she left before I could get a picture of her with her medal!
My race was definitely the most exciting of the series. As a quick recap, in the first week, the field stayed together throughout the whole race, minus a few stragglers who fell off the pace, and concluded with a field sprint. In the second week, the pouring rain scared most riders off and Chris and I drilled those that did show up until only he and I remained. This week was vastly different, but similar at the same time. One big difference was that the official announced that there would be primes, or intermediate sprints for prizes/cash! One prime was for an ABR sanctioned prize and the other was for $20. After the first lap, the official rang the bell for prime on the next lap. I had been very aggressive right out of the gate, my legs were not feeling all that good, and I got myself into bad position for the sprint, so I did not contest the first prime. Oh well. This prime actually shattered the field. The result had one rider off the front, a group of four (including me) then the rest of the pack split up into 1s and 2s. An unfortunate thing about racing with Cat 5s is that many do not understand strategy or how to ride in a pack. I had to teach my fellow companions how to pace line in a manner that would allow us to catch the breakaway rider. It took time, but it seemed like some of my yelling and instructing was sinking in. At least they were willing to work to bring him back to set up a "field" sprint.
At some point later in the race, the official announced another prime for our posse of 4. I got myself into 3rd wheel going into turn four, my favorite position to be in in that corner when the race matters. I hammered it coming out of the corner and raced passed the guys in my group to easily win the prime. It just so happened that this prime was worth $20 and the first was only worth $2. I definitely won the better one!
Once we regrouped, the chase for the breakaway commenced again. Now we were running out of time. Myself and big pony (a Team Pegasus rider named Chris) were doing a lot of the work, but as I shouted to my group, I really did not want to lose to a breakaway rider. With one lap to go, we still had not caught him, but we were making significant gains because our organization was finally there. Then it happened. I made the final pull that bridged us to the lapped rider drafting off his wheel right before turn 3. I relaxed, content to just sit in this position through turn 4, assuming none of my companions from my chase group tried to move up. As we rounded turn 4, I hammered it to the finish line and easily won the field sprint.
Following the race, I found the guy who was in the breakaway to congratulate him for a strong effort and thanked the guys in my chase group for their work. Big pony ended up taking 2nd and the breakaway rider took 3rd. One of the officials commented that he would have liked to see a true head to head sprint between myself and the breakaway rider, since we both were strong sprinters. I agreed. I would definitely like to test my sprint skills against other good sprinters. I have a feeling that I will get my chance soon with the WCA Road Cup starting soon.
My results in this series were 1st in Weeks 1 and 3 and 2nd in Week 2. One of the officials told me that I was not allowed to race Cat 5 anymore. I agreed and took my upgrade. I knew that I probably should not have raced Cat 5; however, all of my teammates, of which only Hank and Chris showed up once thanks to other commitments, are Cat 5s and they split 5s and 4s in this series. Now I am a Cat 4 in both ABR and USAC, inching closer and closer to my goal of the season to upgrade to Cat 3.
Finally, I would like to thank Kenosha Velosport and ABR for putting on a great training series. The volunteers and officials were great! This is definitely a fun series to tune up the skills from winter training indoors to prep for spring/summer racing!
Happy Training!
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