Can do!!!
Committing to endeavors doomed to fail is a particular specialty of mine 
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Speaking of crit strategies…what ever happened to those 5 guys who wanted to show up in matching kit and pull a TTT on the field? 
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I guess you didn’t understand the metaphor. Race craft > FTP in a crit.
Turn up.
Have fun.
Don’t over think it. I wish I’d said this to myself last Saturday.
In all honesty, I’ve raced seven crits so far this season and every single one has been different in a multitude of ways. Just focus on the things you CAN control.
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Excuse me? Pretty sure I was agreeing you.
Sorry. I thought you were being sarcastic. My bad.
I’ll echo what’s been said above about race craft and whatnot. Don’t be too upset if your result doesn’t fully reflect your fitness.
I’ll be interested to hear your take on how your bunch riding experience from fondos and gravel races translates to crit racing. My experience of going from sportive to crits in the uk was a bit of an eye opener to say the least.
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Just watch the first 5 or 6 minutes of that video, then make sure to not do those things. Huge gaps, breaking the wind even though you’re 5-10 spots back, taking that hairpin very poorly, etc.
Being a Cat 4/5 race the pace will be up and down a lot, especially around that hairpin where people will sprint out of it for 5-10 seconds, soft pedal, then look around to see who else is still there. My advice would be to stay on the gas when they’re soft pedaling.
Just remember as a 5 you just need to put in your 10 races. Try to start a break, bridge gaps up to any breaks, take some primes. No way to know what your strengths/weaknesses are unless you try out a bunch of different tactics.
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I’ll toss in my perspective, did my first crit the end of January. Have done a lot of fondos, and a lot of club rides ranging from 30-100 miles. The fondos didn’t translate to crit racing at all. The club rides when ridden hard have translated (somewhat) to crit racing, as we have a lot of riders with past and present race backgrounds so it is easy to chase the rabbits and simulate racing in a pack at speed.
@batwood14 I’ll be at this race too, and it’ll be my first crit ever as well. 41 degrees and 17mph of wind off the lake will be brisk for the 8am Cat 5 start…I’ll be riding a black Cannondale from the 80s with downtube shifters, come say hi if you see me!
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This thread 100% needs a race debrief afterwards! We all want to know how it went!
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I did my first 2 races this year!
Cat 4/5 for Denmark (D - group)
my first race was 42mins at np 340w i Finished 24 out of 30…
Just try stuff and put theory in practice ! don’t expect anything and have fun. First 90 degree corner side by side at 45 kph i scary stuff so be patient and be safe!
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I just watched videos of the Cat 5 and Cat 4/5 races from the past two years for my crits this weekend. Cat 5 looks like a loose group on a drop ride, with about 7 guys that are able to ride off the front while the rest of the 20ish noodle along. Cat 4/5 looks much more like crit racing as I expect it, with a much bigger field. That said, it looked like a pretty angry pace early on as the whole thing strung out pretty far by three laps (~3mi) in.
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Will do!
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Lol. This. I too thought I would be fine with my reasonably high fitness level, but soon found it counted for very little when I got repeated beatings at cat4 level 
Ok – to close the loop on this thread, here’s my race report.
Short story: first official crit ever, Cat 5…I finished 11th out of 30.
Long story:
I didn’t have it today. Don’t know why. My TSS wasn’t particularly high this week. However, I did do two practice crits on Tuesday, and that’s not a normal thing for me. Maybe I never bounced back.
From the time I was warming up, my legs felt a bit burned. After the first lap, I knew any sort of result might be a struggle. I felt WAY fresher and WAY snappier on Tuesday during the practice sessions – and there were Cat 2/3 racers in those events – and I finished both of those practice races around ~10th position.
Despite my legs not feeling that great, the race was going fine, and I was executing my strategy of staying anywhere from 5th - 10th position the whole time. There were massive accelerations and a bunch of crashes on the hairpin turn – see course graphic below. More on the crashes in a bit.
Course - we rode counter-clockwise:
First thing that happened that I didn’t expect is that some guy shot way off the front from the gun – and I mean WAY OFF the front. After the 3rd lap the marshals were telling us that he had a 30 second gap. After the 4th lap, he had 40 seconds. So I kind of figured that was that.
On the fifth lap, at the hairpin the marshals started yelling to slow down because there was a crash just beyond the turn…and as I came around I see the race leader on the deck. He somehow managed to crash himself going around a turn all alone with a 40 second lead. (I’m guessing…triathlete? )
So now the race is all back together, and since there is no chase anymore, things started to slow down a bit . . . I start to recover and settle in, and even start (unintentionally) rolling through the front. But as soon as I felt my nose in the wind, I’d soft-pedal and let myself fall back to fifth position.
Another thing I noticed is that everyone tried to take all the corners (other than the hairpin) on the inside line – which meant they all had to scrub speed and then re-accelerate. I started taking the corners really wide and in some cases found I could pedal through them – but in all cases I found that I didn’t have to scrub any speed and would flow right to the front with no extra effort at all – while everyone else was accelerating out of every turn. Good learning right there!
But then… in the second-to-last lap, in the right-hand turn that led into the hairpin – I followed my strategy of going wide and flowing forward. However I flowed too far forward and was in first wheel – and immediately after the left-hand hairpin turn the race was straight into a block-headwind off Lake Michigan. So as I approached the left-turn into the hairpin, I swung wide to the right to try and invite other riders to pass me so I could settle into shelter as we started riding into the headwind after the turn. And it worked. Sort of.
As I approached the hairpin on a slight uphill, 5 riders slid inside of me to lead through the turn – and I figured I’d come out in 6th - 8th wheel. Perfect. Except . . . just as I was at the apex of the hairpin, a rider tried to undercut me on the inside – he was too fast, too too tight and he went down immediately in front off me and slid right at my front wheel.
I have no idea at all how he missed me/I missed him. In fact, I was bracing for the crash/fall. I skidded and my back wheel started sliding, and I didn’t know whether I was going to hit the rider sliding under me, or if the riders behind me were going to come into my back and knock me down.
As it turned out, I didn’t go down. I have no idea how – I can still picture the guy sliding at my front wheel and just thinking there was absolutely no way he was going to miss it. I still don’t know how that didn’t happen.
But two things did happen: I had a massive surge of adrenaline, and I found myself at a dead stand-still. I put my head down and re-accelerated as hard as I could and found myself in about 15th - 20th spot just as we came through the start-line and the bell started ringing for the final lap.
To get back on to the lead group, I was dead sprinting into a headwind from a stand-still just and as soon as I got back up to a top 5 position, the leaders started turning up the pressure as the final lap began. And I found myself cooked.
My legs weren’t great to start with. And the shot of adrenaline when that crash happened made my whole body feel like it was in a lactic bath…I was burning in places I didn’t know I had muscle. And then sprinting to get back on with one lap to go…I basically just hung on the best I could for the last circuit and finished 11th with absolutely no finishing-kick possible at that point while my HR was completely pinned.
Overall, good learnings – and I’m super happy I didn’t go down, despite having a massively close call. Regardless of the crash that happened in front of me, I wouldn’t have won the race – my sprint isn’t what it needs to be, and even if it was my legs weren’t great today. I think the best case scenario would have been a top-5. So finishing 11th with the adversity I had is pretty good.
After 2 practices races earlier this week, and 1 official race earlier today – here are my personal thoughts/takeaways:
– I’m not sure I like criterium racing. I feel super-comfortable with the speed and the tightness of the group – which is actually fun – I just think I like races that are selective vs. tactical.
– You gotta be lucky. I was lucky not to go down today in a way that had nothing to do with my skills, but had everything to do with the riders around me. I’m sure this would improve in higher categories, but that would require me to put in the effort to do more of these and get upgraded. Unsure.
– I’d have to spend a lot of time training my sprint. Have to give that some thought. At my age (44), sprint training seems to require a lot of recovery – and every time I do some sprinting, subsequent workouts seem to suffer.
– The gravel races and road races that I enjoy seem really have this element of “you either got it or you don’t” and there are hills that winnow the field down over 2-4 hours until you’ve either made the final selection, or you haven’t – and that’s when shots start to fire. The crit today seemed to have no element of selectiveness to it – at least if you have fitness – it seemed to be: stay in the group; stay upright; sprint. Again, nothing wrong with it, just not sure it was that enjoyable.
Overall – great experience, and glad I did it and put the effort into it. Will probably do one again – but for now, will get my focus back to rolling road/gravel races and pushing that Vo2 button down, and raising the FTP higher.
Thanks for everyone’s advice along the way!
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Good report. I think there are plenty of ways to win and attack a crit, not just sprinting, but sprinters have an advantage. That’s OK. I missed my chance in my C5 race yesterday, but learned a good lesson.
My course was a “figure 8”, no hairpins but six rights and two lefts. I agree that the outside line was faster in my races as well. It was easy to get in the 5 race, less easy in the 4/5 as it was used more. That said, I liked being forced to ride different lines from a learning and skill perspective. I thought I read the races pretty well, but failed to act in the 5.
I’ll be doing more crits this season, and a couple of road races too. We’ll see which I like best. (Triathlete)… thought your solo crash observation was funny!
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I think I agree with you overall - just not sure I agree with you in a Cat 5 race. They’re too short for the field to soften up, and too disorganized to read — in my extremely limited experience.
I actually would have loved to see if the guy who broke from the start was actually able to stay away had he not fallen - that would have been interesting.
I feel justified making the triathlete jokes…I’m a recovering no-sleever myself
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My C5 race was as organized as the 4/5 race yesterday. I read it well, knew where I wanted to make my move, then, just… didn’t.
This may be true for the course you were on today, but certainly isn’t for all crits. This’ll vary depending on where you live, but around me there are un-selective crits where you can hang in the bunch as long as you’re reasonably fit, and there are hyper-selective crits - usually shaped like a rectangle where the long side is a hill, so every lap has a 30-60 second climb. In crits like these, especially in 5 and 4/5 fields, 2/3 of the field usually gets dropped in the first half of the race. Maybe these are rare around you, or maybe not. Either way it sounds like you might find them more interesting, so give the course profile a look - that could be a factor in determining whether a race is worth signing up for or not.
Congrats on finishing and avoiding the crash!
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