Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed review of your race and the experience. It does sound like a birth of fire but with the exception of your injury, I’m getting the impression you quite enjoyed yourself.
Pack riding at speed whilst you and others around you are surfing wheels is a skill in its own right. The more you experience it the more natural it seems.
Hope your next race sees you crossing the finish line 
Pump! But if you forget one it’s a great way to meet new people…
Surely he would have moved into 2nd Cat if he’d won 6/7 this year
He’d be on 60 points
Good effort, forget about the result, the experience you gain from your first few crits is invaluable.
One thing you always is find is that at the start of the season the fields are always massive. This does tend to settle down.
Depending upon where you live in the UK there are a lot of circuits, to suit different riders.
Lancaster and Preston are decent on this side of the Pennines. Yorkshire folk are spoiled for choice though 
Keep going
That should have been 6 out of 7 including this race, so that would be his Cat 2
Well done for competing in your first crit. My main goal for my first one was to avoid crashing so I hung around at the back a bit to get a feel for what it’s like.
I did York last year and picked up my first point there. I wasted too much energy staying near the front and paid for it on the sprint. Perhaps try one of the crits at the Brownlee Centre here in Leeds, the circuit’s is quite a bit different and there are usually some cat. 4 races organised over the summer. Although I’ve never found cat. 4s to be much easier than 3/4s, if at all.
I’m around 4w/kg and last year managed to pick up a few points without training specifically for crits. I think 30s repeats and some sprint work could make up for any watt/kg deficiencies. Might as well do one and see what it’s like.
I’ve not done a lot of crit racing but races at both Leeds and York don’t have chip timing. Ilkely Cycle races did and I’d bet that Otley does too. Most of the local races are hosted and organised by local clubs so don’t have the budget to afford chip timing.
Cheers. I will keep an eye open for other crits no too far away. I’ll try the Brownlee centre when I see one scheduled. I spotted the Wakefield one next week but it’s sold out 
but that’d probably pushing my leg a bit too much. Anyone done one at Wakefield? Suppose I could just go and watch anyway. Will probably learn something, that is if the Mrs is ok with it 
That’s a really interesting tactic, I came to the opposite conclusion and tried to stay near the front because I felt I didn’t want to have to kill all my speed going through the hairpin. If I could maintain speed I wouldn’t need to accelerate so hard out of the hairpin.
I find it incredibly frustrating to have to break so hard into a corner I know I can take faster than most other riders. But perhaps I should suck it up, and have an easier race?
I agree. I’m not sure why being at the back before a hairpin would be a good move🙈
Because usually you can coast for at least 300m along the back straight whilst the pack charge to the hairpin only to drop anchor. You can catch onto the pack easily when they slow. Having coasted for about 20sec, you can save so much by doing this every lap.
As I wrote above, not in the last third of the race though!!
Fair play podiuming with that tactic. Risky, but it paid off for you!!
If I were the OP, knowing that, I’d be at the front and attack coming out of that bend early in the race😜
Yeah I think I’m mostly convinced I’m going to try one. Is that an Alba Rosa kit I can spy in your profile pic? That’s my club too if so! I should try and get down to the Brownlee centre for some track sessions on Thursday really!
Yeah, it’s Alba. The Thursday sessions are pretty good for getting you used to riding fast and close to other riders. Also helps you work on cornering too. The 3 lap race sims at the end are good fun.
A first crit is always a daunting occasion. Rather than just training on a turbo and enterring races in the future, a sound tactic would be to find a local group speed session, otherwise known as a chain gang. The skills learnt here will save you loads of energy in a race and enable you to ride nearer the front and stay in touch with the group.
I believe York VC do a chainy? I’m tempted to give it a try, but it’s hard to fit around other commitments!
If you dont practise riding in a group at speed, I wouldnt consider racing until you’ve mastered the skills of following wheels, sprinting out of corners and hanging in when it really hurts. And you’ll be less likely to crash too, or avoid others that do. Crits are a brutal side of the sport, but very exciting. A lot of us learnt as Schoolboys, often painfully. I started racing with the recently departed Paul Sherwen as schoolboys, so you can work out how many years I’ve been at it.
Yeah we do a chainy on both a Tuesday (slightly lumpy) & Thursday (flat) when the clocks change. Meet at 6pm at B&Q at osbaldwick on both nights. Feel free to come along once we start back up, we’re friendly bunch. Just to make you aware the ride is a drop ride.
By the way i’ve ridden a vets crit at Wakefield and its a nice circuit with a long straight and a slight hill on the loops at each end. No slow corners and wide with a grassy run off. I finished 3rd out of a break of 7 BTW.