City Park Criterium

June 4, 2006

I was doubling up this weekend in an attempt to stay close to DR HORTON in the BAT series. After getting schooled yesterday, I vowed to ride smarter today and conserve myself for either a successful breakaway or a better sprint. The race today was only 30 minutes, versus the 40 minutes we did the day before and that usually means the pace is hard from the start. Crits are usually that way. I averaged 164 bpm in yesterday’s race, but I made the race harder than it needed to be on me. I was supposed to have had a teammate with me today, but Shawn didn’t show up. I was solo against six DR HORTON riders and six riders on the Rocky Mountain Sports team.

My goals today were to finish well, beat as many DR HORTON riders as I could, and to better use my efforts. I hoped for a race without primes because of my difficult to resist them, but primes also make the race faster and harder and that works to my advantage. I don’t want things all bunched up where I can be boxed in. I like things all strung out in a long line with only the top ten having any chance at a good finish.

I staged in the second row and after the usual start problems, I was 2/3’s of the way back in the 65-rider field. The course was really cool and situated in Denver City Park where the zoo and the museum are located. The pavement was really smooth and well swept and the course was lined with green grass and lots of big shade trees. The temperature was hot and rising when we queued at 10:15 a.m.

The course goes straight for a bit, and then has a 90-degree left turn, straight, then into a roundabout where we go 220 degrees around the circle before the most technical turn on the course, a hard 120-degree turn to the left. This leads into another 220-degree roundabout and then we finally hit a 300-degree roundabout about 200 meters before the finish. It was absolutely crucial to be at the front before this last roundabout as there was hardly any time to move up after it. This also was the site of the only crashes I saw, as riders were anxious to start pedaling and sometimes started while the bike was still leaned way over.

On the first lap, at the most technical corner, I nearly came to a stop because of all the bunching up. The first two laps of this race were very hard on me as I had to sprint so hard out of every corner just to maintain position. I had to move up in the field to smooth the race out for me. This would make the effort easier. I took the turns wide and moved up a few spots here and there in the first two laps. At the end of the second lap when the leaders eased up a bit coming into the start/finish, I moved up quickly on the outside, clear into the top ten. I was surprised how easy that was and determined not to slip back in this pack as it wouldn’t be that easy to move up again.

They announced a prime on the fourth lap and it was a 2-position prime. I was in 4^th position coming around and despite my plan to ignore these, I went for it, only because second place would win something. Unfortunately, I got nipped at the tape and got third. Dang. I keep failing in the finish. I stayed near the front and the next time they announced a prime it was a 3-position prime and this time I stayed up there to take third. For this effort I won a year’s subscription to a magazine called Predator, which is “Cycling’s Journal of Mental Conditioning” and a $15 gift certificate to RoadID (I don’t get the concept of these things. Can’t you just write this information on a business card and keep it with you?).

I didn’t go for the next prime but on then they called another 2-position prime and I was going to ignore this one as well since we had one rider off the front. As we were coming into the final roundabout a rider moved up alongside us leaders and said, “You know we have a rider off the front, right?” I knew it, but I wasn’t chasing it down with two 6-person teams in the race and other 3-4 person teams. I was third wheel going into the roundabout (not counting the guy off the front), when the lead guy hit his pedal and went down. The second rider plowed right into him and completely flipped. I braked and dove to the inside, missing the crash and finding myself alone. I went hard for just a few pedals strokes and easily took second place in the prime. This time I earned a 1-hour massage! Sweet!

The pack came back together, the rider off the front had won two primes and then sat up, wasted probably. The two crashed riders got back into the race on the next lap, but they then fell out the back, I was told by one of their friends. I suspected they had some sore muscles and healthy road rash. We now had five laps to go and staying at the front for three of these wasn’t too hard. With two laps to go the paced picked up considerably and I was glad. I needed it strung out. I thought about attacking to try and solo to the win, but the pace was too high and I had no teammates to pick up the slack if I was caught and died. I sat tight.

In the last lap I moved up to second wheel and I was ready for the inevitable attacks out of every corner as riders tried to move up before the final roundabout. I was ready for each one and reacted immediately. I wasn’t going to slip back one spot if I could help it. Going into the last roundabout, one guy too a flyer and I grabbed his wheel. We hit that last big corner so fast I was sure my bike would skid out, but it held fast. I came out of the corner 2^nd wheel and punched it. Two riders moved by me, but I found and extra gear and got one of them back, taking a solid 2^nd place! This was my 2^nd best finish ever and my 1^st time getting 2^nd. It was also my best finish in a Criterium.

I forget the team of the guy who won, but it was an all orange kit. DR HORTON supposedly placed riders in the top ten, including the winner of the Rocky Mounts crit the day before, Sam Linzell. Being the only Rocky Mounts rider, we lost points to them here, but I helped limit the damage. Certainly we are back behind them now, but it should be close. The standing are tracked here, but they are two weekends out of date.

For my efforts, I won a $25 check and a $25 gift certificate to a Turin Bicycles. Unfortunately they are in Denver and it will be tougher to make them a visit and they don’t have an online presence. Still, I reaped a pretty good haul of goodies from this race. The goodie bag included a water bottle, gel, sunscreen, etc. The race was very well attended and expertly run. The course is the best crit course I’ve done this year. Golden’s course was great, but the pavement was so bad that I give the nod to this course for great, sweeping turns.

Davis Phinney (the winning-est bike rider in U.S. history) and his wife Connie Carpenter (gold medal in the 1984 Olympic road race) were on hand to watch their son Taylor race in the Cat. 3 division. I introduced myself and he was very nice. Later he sat at the announcer’s table for an interview and he staunchly defended Lance Armstrong in the doping allegations and said he had read the recently released 138-page report exonerating Armstrong of EPO use in the 1999 Tour. I was a bit surprised to see him defend Lance so vigorously. Davis raced this very same crit 30 years ago and was just over watching the Giro in Italy and he talked to Bobby Jullich, who raced this same crit 20 years ago (both raced it as juniors). So this course has some history.

As you can see by the graph below, we did 16 0.9-mile laps in 29:10 for an average speed of 29+ mph. That can’t be right, but I’m sure we did 16 laps – the graph doesn’t lie. They advertised the course at 0.9 mph, but it must have been shorter. I’d guess we averaged more like 25 mph., but it was a short race and dead flat. The problem was all the corners had to slow things down. My heart rate averaged 162 bpm and hit 175 in the final sprint.