Tour de Tuscaloosa Cat 5 Crit Race Report

Pro/1/2 crit racing in the sunset

I spent a lot of time on the warmup laps thinking about how to take the lines around the course as fast as possible, so by the time the race started I felt confident that I could take that hill at 41 mph with no brakes and hit my sightlines each lap. The pace for the first two laps was really high – around 25mph – and I was hurting by the beginning of the third lap.

I held onto the group that Brian was in until late in the second lap, but I was losing ground on the short climb each time we hit it. I also got bumped hard at the base of that hill by someone who stood into the hill while in a group of riders five abreast. Not smart, but I bumped back and nothing more happened.

By the end of the third lap, the field was strung out pretty far except for the lead group. I found myself on my own and riding at threshold trying to see what would develop. I picked off several guys riding solo who were already pretty broken and moved up several places until I found someone riding my pace. As I passed him, I told him to jump on my wheel if he wanted to work together. He gladly obliged, and we picked up another five riders over the course of the next lap. Now seven strong, our little group was working well together and was making up time on the lead group with every lap.

Our speed surged again when I saw Brian and his group at the end of one of the University Blvd straight, but we held together. With 1.5 laps to go, a rider in our group skidded coming out of the off-camber-uphill right hander before the Univ. Blvd straight and the rider to my immediate right panicked and went down hard. He jostled me hard enough as he fell to knock my right foot loose from my pedal and almost take me down. I clipped in and rode away from it, but it was enough to gap me from the group I had been working with.

Even though I’m not trying to make a habit of finishing races solo, I ran the final lap solo trying to grab back onto my group. By the time I had covered around 1.5k of the 2k course I had nearly closed the gap. I sprinted solo for the finish because I felt like I had earned the right to.

First crit. Survived sketchy pack jostling, a crash happening RIGHT next to me, and I built a working group around myself to regain position. It was great. Watching the Pro/1/2 race at the end of the day was the perfect end to the day. They were taking 40 seconds less to complete a lap, and FLYING around the turns. You could feel the wind from the pack as they flew by. I can’t begin to describe the sound of their tires scratching for grip on the pavement, and the chorus of 100 derailleurs clunking across 100 cassettes as they started the downhill, but I’ll never forget it. If racing has a soundtrack, that is it. You can’t get this stuff on Versus, you have to be there.