2BContinued Zeeland Criterium

Okay, I know I may have said that I wouldn't do one of these races again. But when your good friend is a key player in organizing the event and wants the team to have a good showing, you take some risks and go for it.

Downtown Zeeland, MI, June 21, 2013...
I had to rush out of work to make it to the start in time, as this was a Friday evening race. Fortunately, Kristin got out of work early and had all of my stuff ready and a snack prepared. She is the best. We hit the road and made it on time. We delivered the two boxes of PowerBar product to the race table and I headed out to warm up. One of the cool things that PowerBar does for Team Elite is sponsor "small" events in order to grassroots market their products. Pretty cool deal.
 

After a few laps on the course, I had made note of the tight turns and potholes and was ready to go. Since the were several of us racing, I thought we would stick together and work as a group. But, when the race started, a lot of the guys held back and didn't try to make the main group. I saw an opening and stood on the pedals to latch onto the back. The first turn was chaos. It was probably the second tightest turn on the course, and with everyone battling for positioning, there was A LOT of braking (in this type of race,where you ride maybe one or two blocks before turning, you need to. Keep your speed up though the turns). This caused a lot of slinky action on the back of the main group: sprint, brake, sprint, brake, etc. The first lap went by very quickly, I didn't have my garmin, but I was told we were going 26-27 on the straights.

I started to get dropped because I couldn't find space to pass some riders and thought about sitting up and waiting for the rest of the group. Then, CRASH. Not me, thankfully! But ahead in the main group. My groupetto caught back up with the back and at this point most of the braking culprits had fallen off. So, clean riding, which was nice. I decided to go for it and see how long I could last. I didn't last long, but after 3 laps I saw most of my teammates on the sidewalk. I was worried that one of them had crashed, but there wasn't any way I could find out. Turns out they were almost ready to be lapped and had to retire from the race.

So I was out in no-mans land looking for a group to share the work with. Finally I caught up to one and they latched on to my wheel. I wasn't exactly looking to do all of the work, so I sat up and moved over so they would pull ahead. I rode with two or three of them for most of the race, one of them was a big guy and took his turns into the wind, meaning we all got a nice break. Lap after lap, the race coordinators said they would keep us out for as long as possible. With about a tenth of a mile to go on our third to last lap, the group caught us. The race coordinators apparently called the lapped riders off the course, but we were long gone and focused on not getting run over. So, I technically did not finish, but official results say that I finished 18th out of 65 or so. Not bad for a CAT4/5 mixed race on a steel framed bike!

So maybe my crit racing days aren't over...?