Every Wednesday night in Boulder during April and May the Ideal Market and Primal put on a crit in a business park across from the IBM building and now having a couple road races under my legs, I decided that it was time to see how I would hold up against these Colorado racers in a criterium.
Ashton and I drove down to Boulder Tuesday after noon where we stayed up in the mountains with our friends Todd and Liz and I got to take the Madone out for a little climbing. We arrived at their house just as they were getting off work, so I put on a kit jumped on a bike and descended the mountain so I could ride back up with them on their climb back home. From the base of the climb it is a twenty minute ride up to their house including a couple of nasty switchbacks one of which pitches up to 23%. As we approached their street Todd and Liz peeled off and I continued up the mountain. I proceeded to climb for another 40 minutes or so past Bald Mountain scenic area, up to the top of Big Horn Mountain, I reached about 8,500ft and turned around just before the descent to the town of Gold Hill. The climb was breathe taking and the decent back to Todd and Liz's was wicked fast, only taking me about 18 minutes to make it back to the house.
http://connect.garmin.com/course/1091233
Tuesday evening I changed my Corsa back from its roubaix set-up to my standard road gear with lighter wheels/tires and an 11-23t cassette, Liz cooked us some amazing green curry and we ended the evening with an herbal tea out on the patio. Wednesday afternoon Ashton and I drove down into town, picked up our friends after they got off work and headed out to the race.
We parked and I went and got registered and started to warm up, which I would have ended up getting plenty of anyway, we all lined up at the start line and the organizer informed us that we were waiting on the medics and that we were to take a neutral lap and then we would start the race, one lap quickly turned into four and finally the ref lined us up for the start. During all of the neutral laps the starting order got shuffled and they decided to send the woman's cat4 race off in front of us, we caught them in the first lap and as we passed we picked up a good number of them into our field.
This being a criterium I employed my standard crit plan; stay in the top ten riders in the beginning, move into a safe position during the middle and then try to get as close as possible to the front without taking a pull at the end...and that's basically how it went. At about five laps to go my friend Eric on UNC cycling team moved to the front, I tried to get to his wheel to assist him if he wanted to try and make a move, but another rider came along side me on the outside of the peloton closing my door to get out and I found myself trapped in the group. By 'three to go' I had moved up to fifth wheel and was feeling good, we came around to the first turn again and I got pushed back into the group and that's where I stayed until the end. The sprint started coming out of the third turn in the final lap and I finished a good twenty-some odd places back.All in all, I had a lot of fun the course was fast and the pavement was good, everybody there was real friendly and I will definitely be going back to Boulder for more rides and fast crits.
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