Wente Crit: "A Crit For Power Critters"
First 3/4 crit. Expected it to be fast, but safer than just a 4's crit. Boy was I wrong on that second count...
Summary: Packfill. Sprint way early for a prime; get pipped at the line for it. Packfill. Crash. Neutral. Five to go. Two to go. Crash. Neutral lap(s?). Two to go. Packfill.
Details: More or less pack fill. Eventually catch an express train up the side, find myself fourth wheel going into the straight on a prime lap. I pull out o Zach (2nd wheel) can see me, and shouts "go for it!!". I take that to mean "start your freaking sprint!" not the intended "this one's yours, dude!". So I started my sprint - from like 600m out. Would appear that I'm a great trained monkey. I get a gap; one guy works really hard to get into my draft, and comes around me at the line for the prime. Note to self: next prime, go later.
Several more laps, and about 30-35 minutes in, some lines are overcooked in one of the corners in the back stretch, and a couple guys go down right in front of me. I move to my left (outside) quickly, but there are just more guys in front of me - I hit the deck, but have had a few crucial seconds to slow down, so it's not bad. Bottle pops out, chain pops off. I get up, and am not completely sure how the whole free lap thing works, so I do a very quick once over (the wheels still spin; brakes still work), and I hop back on and ride towards the line and pit. Hop off in the pit, they tell us that the race is neutral, and it'll be restarted at the line. Toss the bike on my neck, shift through the stack, give everything a much more careful (ie, 5 second, not 0.5 second) lookover, and everything checks out. Meanwhile, guys are rolling in, and the organizers say "you need to get your bike checked out. now. mechanics are over there." I take pride in the fact they never said that to me.
Race restarts with 5 to go (+1 prime). I'm mentally done, and definitely sore. Prime. Lap. Two to go. I see Zach go up and help Oscar reposition on Luther's wheel. Another crash - this one I avoid. Neutral lap (or two? I forget). Restarted - two to go, again. At this point, my left calf is really hurting (pedal dug into it, hard, when my foot unclipped), and I'm sitting way at the back, racing to not DNF. Which I successfully do. Probably 60th or 70th across the line though, but I got across it, more or less whole.
Takeaways:
1) A fast race is a safe race.
2) Once again, I'm glad I'm not going home in an ambulance or helicopter.
3) This course is very deceiving. Generally point 1 holds true (fast => safe), but I feel it is even more the case here. The road are stupidly wide, so riding 10 across is totally feasible at points, but they're not consistently wide, and many of the turns change character half, or two thirds, of the way through. Basically - it's easy to get squeezed out of position, which isn't bad in and of itself, but it means people take really bad lines, and change their lines as the pack shifts through the turns. It's not a technical course until it gets slow - and then it's only technical because you're dealing with a plethora of idiots surrounding you. I'm not sure how much of this was a product of an inherently sketchy pack (vs the nature of the course), but the take-home is very much point #1: a fast race is a safe race - it was much less sketchy when we were 2 or 3 wide, and taking better lines.