Fat City Criterium

What is the best part of bike racing? Is it the fitness you achieve? Is it the competition you crave? For me, it’s the adventure.  From the moment you leave your driveway, to the hours, days, and sometimes weeks before you return home. Everything in-between is an adventure. Which is why I have created this blog, to document my adventures.

The adventure I embarked on was to the McDonald’s Capital City Criterium, located in Frankfort, KY. Seeing as McDonald’s was sponsoring an athletic event, I played along with the irony and enjoyed a pre-race meal of 4 Dorito tacos from Taco Bell. When arriving at the race, I began my pre-race routine, not unique enough to call my  ritual. Porto-pot, registration, pin number, get dressed, ride around, porto-pot, line up.

There were about 65 riders on the line as the race took off. Within the first 200 meters a breakaway went with about 7 of us. The .5 mile, 4 corner crit allowed the breakaway to stick for about 8 laps, before getting caught. Due to the wide course, riders were able to move up easily which made holding your position rather difficult. In order to keep towards the front, I followed the next big move about 10 minutes later. Our group of 10 had about a 15-20 second gap, and all the teams were represented. Unfortunately, no one wanted to make the initial effort to really bury himself and drive the break to open a larger gap. This was frustrating, and as I look back on the situation I will make the effort to carry out this roll in the future. After about 8 laps, the break was caught and I drifted back to the middle of the peloton.  Surprisingly, after only a couple laps, I was recovered and back on the front covering moves. It felt good to race aggressive, and even better to know my fitness was coming around.

As the race progressed I followed a couple attacks from Texas Roadhouse but nothing stuck. As the race winded down I felt fine for the amount of work I had done to cover surges and stay at the front. With fewer than 10 laps to go a group of 4 rolled off the front and I missed the move while positioning myself for the sprint. With 4 to go the break was dangling off the front and the bike race now turned into a poker match. Questioning whether I should play my cards and bridge the gap solo, or wait for the sprint, I incorrectly assumed we would catch them.  With 3 laps to go Roadhouse had a 6 man lead-out train lined up and I hopped on. While they were careful not to catch their teammate in the break ahead, the lack of speed caused bunching up and I struggled to hold their wheel.  As the bell rang with 1 lap to go I was positioned in the top 10 but not near the front enough. As we rounded the last corner I exploded out of the turn and passed a couple riders but I had way too much left over when I crossed the line. I ended up 12^th overall.

Someone once said, “adventure is just bad planning.” I guess I had an adventure then because I planned for a better result then 12^th. I did however learn a lot, like driving the break initially to get it rolling, as well as riding top 5 in the last corner even if it means riding into the wind. Overall it was a wonderful day, the weather was perfect, and I had a fat Philly cheese steak sandwich after the race. Life is good.