Way back in February when Brad, Greg, and I sat down to discuss this years focus races for the Cycle U squad, we decided to include all of the crits that happen around the end of May and the beginning of June. Back then they called it Speed Week. As the season started, the WSBA calendar was updated to include something called the Cascadia Crit Series, which looked to replace Speed Week and actually would span 3 weeks and consist of 6 races. Not much info was available at the time but I was intrigued by the idea of a crit series so I kept looking to see if anymore info was available. Slowly the series begin to take form and races were dropped and new ones created and by late April/early May everything had been ironed out. The series was to consist of 6 crits, and those crits would be held in Woodinville, Fremont, Seward Park, Ballard, Boat Street, and finally in Tacoma. Last year I missed almost all of the crits due to work and the only one I was able to race was in Burien on 4th of July. I was terrible at it! I got gapped within 5 minutes and lapped within 12 minutes. So I knew how hard crits were and to race this many in such a short amount of time seemed daunting yet challenging to me. So as the races drew nearer I went ahead and preregistered for all of them that I could, knowing that this would be a sure fire way to get me out to the race (I'm not throwing away money!). My plan was to race as hard as I could and hopefully get progressively better as the series went along and maybe even come out with a decent standing in the series classification. Here's how the races went.
Race #1 Woodinville, Saturday, may 29th-I caught a ride from Tim #2 who was also
racing. The weather in Seattle was slightly
rainy but as we headed over to Woodinville
it really started to come down hard. We were
regretting our preregistrations already! The race
was in downtown Woodinville and started by a
baseball field where we found a dry dugout to
warm up under. A few other racers from other
teams came over and it was pretty social and
fun, but the general mood was pretty dismal
as no one seemed to want to race in the wet
stuff. About 20 minutes from the scheduled
race start I decided to go out and ride the course,
which was finally closed off to car traffic and
open to racers. The course was a 3 corner, all
right-handers and the first thing I noticed heading into turn #1 were all of the traffic turtles and manhole cover right in the sweet spot of the corner! Scary! As I continued around the course I saw that turn #2 was pretty much the same as #1, but then led into a longer straight stretch with a slight downhill into turn #3. From there the road curved back around to the start/finish line. There was a lot of standing water on the road and even more of it still coming from the sky. The race started late and I was thoroughly soaked and cold by the time they called us up to the start line. Jed had come out to race as well, so the three of us lined up on the front left of pack and pretty soon afterwards we were off! We took the first corner on the outside and moved up pretty well on the first lap but it was pretty obvious early on that other guys were pushing it in the corners way better than I was. I'm a nervous cornerer at best and downright twitchy when there's 1/2" of water on the road. So I systematically started losing spots and by lap 5 or 6 I was having to sprint out of every corner just to stay attached to the pack.
Another few laps and I was officially off the
back, alone as I just went into survival
mode and thought only of keeping the
pedals turning and staying upright.
After a few more laps (of seeing nobody
except the occasional glimpse of lone
riders ahead who had also been dropped),
I was caught by a large group of riders going faster than me. I thought it was the head of the race lapping me so I moved over to the right so they could keep racing, but then picked up the paceto try to keep them in sight. We rode that way for a few laps and I was thinking that the field must have sat up if these guys were still out front but the pack still hadn't come by me. Then another lap and the race official pulled us all. Turns out they were a group of dropped riders working together to try to reattach, just like me. I felt pretty silly for staying off the back of this group when I could have been with them, helping out and maybe keeping us in the race for a few more laps. Oh well, lesson learned. We all rolled back to the finish line to see the last 6 laps of the race and watch as Aaron Huebner of Counterbalance time trial it in for the first win of the series with a commanding 40 second gap on the rest of the field. Jed and Tim hung in and sprinted for the finish and got pretty decent placing, Jed at 11th and Tim at 27th (out of a field of 75 guys). I wasn't listed on the results and I just figured that I had gotten a DNF for getting pulled. So I was definitely bummed, seeing as how I wanted to do well in this series, but I was already thinking about things to work on for the next race, which would be the next morning in the center of the universe, Fremont.
Race #2 Fremont, Sunday, May 30th-
Brad picked me up early for the race
and it was already sprinkling,
which really sucked because up
until the previous evening the
forecast for the day was
supposed to be dry and sunny.
Well, that's racing in the Pacific
Northwest for you! We drove to Fremont
and found a place to set up our trainers
where we wouldn't get to wet until Jed
showed up with our canopy. Tim #2 met
us up soon after that. I got changed
immediately and went out to ride the course
because I was really nervous about turn #1,
a big 140 degree left-hander that promised to be the big decision maker for the race. As I rolled by registration I noticed they had results posted from the Woodinville race so I went to check them out and I saw that they had indeed placed me, 61st and that I had 60 series points! This definitely cheered me up because I felt like I now had something to show for my effort. With a smile on my face I went out to check out the course. The rain had stopped for the time being so at least the road was dry, which was good because I wanted to kinda push it a bit in pre-riding the course to get a feel for what it was going to race like. Turn #1 proved to be fairly technical, being almost a complete turnaround AND slightly off-camber. I noticed a few guys clipping their pedals and started to worry that their would be some crashes here. The course then headed down Canal St before turning left at turn #2, a fairly easy, fast corner with a bit of rough pavement to the outside of it. Turn #3 was soon after that, back towards the start/finish line. This one seemed pretty easy and you could swing wide through it and keep pedaling. So another 3 corner crit. Cool. My legs were still a bit cooked from the effort on Saturday but I hoped they would wake up and do their job soon! After a bit of riding the course Jed showed up with the canopy and we headed to that to warm up on the trainers. 15 minutes before race time we headed back out on course finish warming up and Jed mentioned he was riding some tires he didn't feel completely confident with and they were making weird sounds in the corners, kinda like they were compressing. Oh well, too late now, I though. We lined up and after a brief talk from Phil, the USACycling official, we were off for another 40 minute pain cave. To make a long story short, my legs never woke back up and I soon found myself working with a chase group at the 10 minute mark. 5 minutes later, Phil pulled us. Crazy. I couldn't believe how bad I had pooched that. I wasn't cornering worth a damn. If the pack swung tight, I went wide. If they went wide, I went tight. I never could get into the slipstream and worked way too hard to maintain any kind of position. And I overcooked corner #2 and almost took out Mark Taylor from SCCA/Starbucks. The worst part about doing so poorly at this race was that my wife and some friends had showed up to cheer me on and I was kinda embarrassed. So after getting pulled I went to watch the finish. Brad and Jed were right up front and Tim was a bit further back in the pack. Midway through the race a gap formed in the pack, with Brad and Jed on the right side of it, and Tim on the wrong side. The gap continued to grow and a few riders tried to bridge across, but none succeded. Eventually Phil pulled that whole group, about 15 riders. Right after that it began to rain again and turn #1 got really slick. Crashes started to happen. Unfortunately, Jed was one of them,scraping off a lot of skin he had just grown back after his crash at Walla Walla. So that just left
Brad, who's motorcycle racing pastprepared him for racing tight corners
even in the rain. He was able to move up into
the first 5 wheels going into the last
few laps but unfortunately got gassed
before the sprint and came across the
line 9th. Tim was placed at 34th, I was
45th and Jed was 21st after his untimely
crash. He was able to get onsite medical
attention for his road rash and luckily
nothing was broken or sprained this time.
Although his wife Kelly informed us that
he was done racing (he has since been
back at the races so she must have been
kidding!). So we had a top 10 finish and
since there had only been 60 starters in
our field I was able to pick up a few more
series points so I decided to do the whole
series. Lesson learned from this race: pay
more attention to drafting through the corners, stay in the slipstream as much as possible, and pick one spot on the course to try moving up instead of trying to sprint down every straightway. Oh yeah, and try to recover faster from racing the day before!
(Thanks to wheelsinfocus.com for the photos. Next post will be for Seward Park, Ballard, and Boat Street crits. Thanks for reading.)
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