Cascadia Criterium Series 2010- part 2

Race #3 Seward Park, Thursday, June 3rd- I had raced on Tuesday at Pacific Raceway, down the escape route points-per-lap in the cold, driving rain, so I was a little tired while riding over to Seward Park this night, but the weather was nice so my spirit was lifted. I had left work early (another bonus!), since the 4/5 field was to race at 4:30, and rode the 8 miles from work to the park to get in a warm up. There was no pre-registration for this race so I made sure to get there plenty early in case it sold out quickly, especially with the good weather. One of the nice things about racing at Seward is they have crits there every Thursday night during the spring and summer, so people know not to park their cars in the park on Thursdays. This means the course is immediately open for warming up on, so after registering I ditched my bag by a tree and started doing laps. The course is pretty simple at Seward Park. It consists of a downhill, a flat stretch, an uphill, and then a 140 degree corner into the downhill again. They alternate which way they run in every week, and for the Cascadia Crit they were running it counterclockwise with the start/finish line halfway across the top of the course, by the natural amphitheatre. Last time I raced the course in this direction, a crash happened in front of me caused by two guys veering into each other as the pack bunched up before heading up the hill, and I went down in it, being unable to avoid the guys on the deck. I was determined to not let this stress me out, though, and focused on staying loose and positive.

Not many racers were there and I wondered if it wasn't going to have a low turn-out due to the early start time, but by the time 4:25 rolled around, I was taking my spot beside 82 other racers (75 cap limit, huh?). Brad, who almost missed the cutoff, Tim 2, Chad and Greg were there in the line up as well. All of us Cycle U guys ended up lining up towards the back, except Greg who had his head up when they called us up and got right on the front row. We weren't too concerned, though, because we figured we would have plenty of time to move up. As the race got underway, this held true and we all surged towards mid-pack as the chafe fell off the back. My race was a bit frustrating because I could move up to the front but had problems staying there. I flubbed the sharp corner almost every lap, trying to take it on the inside repeatedly, getting pinched and having to scrub all speed, and then having to sprint back towards the front down the hill. This meant I was recovering on the flat on the bottom before going back up the hill, so when I should have been using my good climbing form to move up on the hill, I found myself just trying to hold my spot before dropping back on the corner again. It was really starting to wear me out by mid race, and then a few guys went down in the corner, with me behind it. I moved clear of the carnage quickly but really had to get on the throttle to get back up into the group. Another match burned too soon. This trend continued for the next 15 minutes and then it was down to the last 2 laps. Going into the hill I really felt my legs doing all they could just to get the pedals over and I slipped back off the back. I held on for the remainder of the race without losing much more ground and came across the finish line about 20 seconds behind the leader. I was happy to have finished and stayed in the pack, but I was also bummed to have not been able to dial that corner in like I had when I had raced here before. Could have been trying to go into it with more than 80 other people instead of the 30 that usually show up to the weekly race. Could have been that I was more tired than I thought. But whatever it was, I did finish and got 54th and 35 more series points. Other Cycle U finishes were Tim 2 at 16th, Chad at 18th, Brad at 23rd, and Greg at 49th. So at least we all finished and none of us went down! I hung out for a while after our race and watched the Masters and the Women's 1,2,3 race and drank a beer with Geoff from Baron Bicycles, who was there trying to sell raffle tickets to win one of his bikes. As I was riding home later, I bonked super hard and barely had enough gas to get back up through Coleman Park headed home! But the next day was Friday and no race, so the plan was to rest and get mentally ready to tackle the next race in the series, which was to be the infamous Ballard crit on Saturday.

Race #4 Ballard, Saturday, June 5th- I was really nervous before this race. Ballard, or the Second Ascent Twilight Criterium, is infamous in every sense of the word. The course features rough, bumpy pavement, bricks, a false flat finishing stretch, manhole covers, a fast, off-camber turn down a slight hill, and guys really bring their "A" game to this race because it is so popular. It also boasts a high turnout of spectators who will laugh at you if you really suck! Almost every bicycle racer in Seattle has either crashed or known someone who has crashed here, and the chances of that happening were exponentially higher when it was raining. So I was a bit relieved that the weather for the day was 70 and sunny, but all the other conditions had me on pins and needles all day. With this on my mind I headed over to Ballard a few hours before the race to scope out the course and try to settle my nerves. Brad, Tim 2, Greg, and Dale were all coming out to race as well, and we ran into Brandon, a new guy on the Cycle U team who came out hoping to get a spot on the start line. The race had sold out earlier that week but there was always the hope that someone registered wouldn't show up and you'd get in. We all rolled around together for a while to get a feel for the course. The start was on bricks halfway up the slight hill on the front stretch. From there it went about 200 meters to turn #1, a left-hander with a nasty dip in the center of the road that would buck you right out of the saddle if you were unfortunate enough to be forced into it. The road then turned downhill to turn #2, the fast off-camber corner I mentioned earlier. This gave way to a flat burn down to Shilshole to turn #3, which put you back onto rough brick and manhole covers. Turn #4 was more mellow, and you could pedal through it, which was great since you needed to carry speed out of it for the false flat back to the finish line. I followed Brad through the course because I knew he could find the clean lines and my plan for the race was to just grab his wheel and try to hang on to it. Of course, picking a line in warm up and actually being in the right place to take that line during a race are worlds apart, but I still thought it might help. As we rolled around I thought to myself that with all of the brick and rough pavement I would ever want to race this course in the rain!

And then it was time to line up, and Phil, the race official, did the call up for our 5 series leaders. The rest of us rolled up to the start line behind them and I actually got a good starting position at the front with my other 4 teammates (Brandon had not gotten in). 40 minutes were put on the board and then the whistle was blown. Go time! The dry road and warm weather must have really warmed up guy's muscles because the first few laps were really fast, but I was doing well, cornering smooth and not having to sprint too hard out of the corners.

I was holding position around 25th wheel. Brad began to move up and I went with him, but that guy is super quick and where he could swing wide on the outside of a corner and have enough speed to move up and get tucked back into the slipstream, I would get hung out to dry and move back quickly. So I went back to where I was and waited for an easier opportunity to move up. It was about 6 laps in when the carnage started. Coming into turn 2, a guy skipped his inside pedal trying to pedal through it and took out another guy. That guy took out another guy and so on until 5 or 6 people were down. I was about 35th wheel at the time and on the inside. The crash happened on the outside, but with everyone veering left to get around the crash, my clean line suddenly became a parking lot. By the time I got through the mayhem the race had shattered. Now, I've seen races on television where something happens to one of the racers: he gets a flat or a mechanical or crashes, and he calmly waits to get a new tire or bike or some gauze, and then he calmly gets back on his bike and spends the next several minutes calmly moving back up to the pack, dosing his effort to not run out of energy in the chase before reconnecting with the pack. Phil Liggett will usually comment on how smart they are racing and how professional they are acting. Well, that wasn't me at all. I freaked out! I didn't want to get dropped when I felt so strong! So I tried to sprint back to the pack at max effort in one shot. I passed guys in a panic who I could have worked with to move back up. Of course this didn't last too long before I got tired and had to ease up. I had the pack in my sights but just couldn't pull them back by myself. Eventually I fell into a strong chase group and we began working together and I was able to recover, especially since I was intentionally not taking long pulls at the front. I was still thinking about trying to bridge back to the pack and knew I'd need to be fairly rested before trying to drop my group and go across.

22 minutes into the race, we came around turn #4 to see a racer ahead of us crash to the pavement. It looked strange to me because I had not seen him collide with anything or person and there seemed to be no reason for him to hit the pavement. Race officials ran onto the course to flag us around the downed rider, who wasn't moving and was lying face down. We came around again and the officials stopped the race. Our chase group was stopped 50 feet behind the peloton, and we couldn't see what was going on with the crashed racer, but we heard they were bringing in some EMT to get the guy some medical attention. This took about 15 minutes with no one knowing what had happened or how he was doing. All we knew was that he was on the First Rate Mortgage team. After they pulled the guy off the course (he was able to feebly wave to crowd as EMTs carried him off on a stretcher, to much applause), the officials got the race back underway, with our group getting a 15 second delay to the peloton. We blasted off in hot pursuit and we immediately went into fast rotations, but it became clear that there were a few guys in the group who weren't that strong and gaps were starting to open in our group. With 8 laps to go I made a move and launched off the front to try to bridge, but I went to late in the straightway before corner #1 and overcooked it, almost running against the curb. On the brakes and back into the pack, which at least was a bit smaller now due to the stronger guys dropping slower racers.

I tried to recover and sit in as much as possible, and 3 laps later I went again, this time judging my distance to the corner better and getting an immediate separation from my group. But as I came around turn #2 the peloton was turning corner #3 and I knew I'd never get across that, so I eased up and let the group catch back on. At that point I knew we weren't gonna' catch up so I started to focus on just putting in hard efforts to at least keep racing until the end of the race, but with 3 laps to go it looked like we were going to get lapped so Phil pulled our group. Damn. At least we were at the finish line so I got to see Brad sprint for 6th place. I was given 46th for my effort and 49 series points. Tim 2 hung on strong and got 16th place. Greg finished just a bit off the back of the pack and placed at 38th. I was somewhat pleased with the race except for my lapse of good judgement and racing smarts. Undoubtedly some of those guys I had sprinted past in my panic and kept their wits about them and gotten back to the main field by dosing their efforts and blah,blah,blah. Still, this was one of my better showings at a crit and I had made a stir in the crowd when I attacked my group, twice. And I had impressed my wife (big bonus!). After the race we hung out for a bit and talked about our race. Another thing I like about crits is how social they are. Since it's pretty spectator friendly, people just hang out all day, like at a 'cross race. So I ended up watching the Pro-1-2 race later that night, being amazed by the guys in the field who can continually attack the field lap after lap and still have fuel in the tank to sprint for the finish. I finally headed home to get some sleep for the next day's battle, which would be fought on the battlefield known as Boat Street.

(thanks to wheelsinfocus.com for the photos. next post will wrap the series up with Boat Street and Tacoma. thanks for reading.)

Cascadia Criterium Series 2010

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 past

prepared 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.)