After finding out I was 2nd on the GC, I was rather nervous about the crit. I know some pretty decent road racers who got pulled last year, and I wanted to be sure I didn't lose any time. The last crit I've done was Kirkland, 2009, and I crashed (not badly, but bad enough to remember). It's too bad, because before I went down, I was cornering really well. Since then, I just haven't been able to get around corners as fast as I should be able to.
The course was actually pretty cool - two very long straights, then a bunch of short-ish turns exposed to the wind. If I had been more confident cornering, I'll bet it could've been a pretty good course for me.
Fortunately, for this crit, I had a bunch of help. Nick Adsero took it upon himself to guide me through the crit, moving me up, watching to be sure I wasn't drifting back behind splits, etc. Basically, the whole thing ended up feeling pretty safe, since I knew that between the two of us we wouldn't get caught on the wrong end of a split. AJ came up in the second half and moved us up a bunch of places on the wide open course, and I was generally able to stay in the top half most of the time with help. Just couldn't shake the nerves in the corners when we were diving in 4 wide. I'm sure Nick got frustrated since moving up in crits (and on corners) is super easy for him, but he decided to help me keep my GC place on the day, which I definitely appreciated.
I ended up feeling very comfortable effort-wise - the crit didn't feel hard at all, at least not with help.
Afterwards, I really focused on eating as much as possible to prepare for the upcoming road race. I also found out that whole teams almost got eliminated by former pro rider Ian McKissick. There was a 20% time cut in the TT (if you're more than 20% slower than 1st, you're done). 6 of 8 Cucina Fresca guys got cut, along with a lot of other good riders... yikes.
I also hung around to watch the Pro/1/2 race, which I guess I'll be doing pretty soon now. I'm definitely way intimidated to being doing crits with them. Really don't know yet how I'll handle that sort of speed. Probably not very well until I get a bit more comfortable.
Race file here (didn't get the whole thing recorded, unfortunately).
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