Colchester Centurion Crit Series, 9 Oct 2021

This race was my first crit race! For a week and a half before the race I hadn’t ridden due to a knee injury so I was going into the race with not much confidence especially as the last time I’d ridden in a group I crashed. The day before the race my dad had ordered some new tubeless tyres which we had a load of problems getting on and ended up just using tubes in them. On the day of the race we drove down to Colchester, an hour and a half drive made into 2 and a half due to missing a junction, traffic and my friend turning up late to watch. We arrived at the track with an hour before the start. As we took the bike out I realised the tyres looked a bit odd, the tyre wasn’t seated properly and we snapped 3 tyre levers attempting to re seat it, eventually we did after a very stressful 20 minutes. I then had forgotten the adapter for our electric pump so we spent the next 15 minutes searching for a pump that worked. We eventually did but the gauge wasn’t working so I think I raced on about 80 psi! We then went over to sign on, have the bike checked, and pin on my number. This left about 10 minutes to warm up so we left the trainer in the car and I rode around the car park, which didn’t really warm me up as I had nowhere near enough time or space.

I was just happy to be starting, I knew it was going to be a hard pace from looking at the previous race and having a look at some of the entrants, one that caught my eye was a Lee Valley rider who was nationally ranked number 9, who not surprisingly won the race. As I had got there so late I wasn’t able to do scouting laps so I didn’t know the layout of the course. Due to this I stayed at the back of the bunch in hope to just scout out the course on the first few laps. The race started and I clipped in well, everyone sprinted off which I coped with well, the first corner took me by surprise as it was a sharp left. I managed to keep good positioning and for the whole lap I stayed near the back keeping up with the pace. As we went through the start line for the second lap there were sprints off the front which caught me off guard, but I managed to catch back on.

This was a trend for the rest of the time I was in the group, attacks went every few mins and the surge in pace was very easy to miss. If you miss it you end up doing a massive effort to catch back on. Many riders attempted to get away but none were able to get further than 30 meters away before being pulled back. It was noticeable that Lee Valley had a strong presence of 5 riders and did most of the work. Unfortunately my wheel was bumping up and down as it still wasn’t seated properly, very off putting but it wasn’t awful. I was very soon spat out the back though due to my lack of race knowledge, strength and prep. I think I could’ve stayed on as I have the strength but just not the positional awareness or cornering ability to keep good position. I ended up doing a 2 up with another rider for the rest of the race and we managed to not get lapped by the bunch until the last straight of the final lap managing to average about 24mph for 50 mins.

I am happy with the effort I put in but most importantly have learnt a lot about being organised and not making changes before a race! I have a lot to learn when it comes to race skills and I look forwards to the next race in a fortnight.

Chris King