@Brendan Rigby First off, only a third of the bunch contested the sprint, so congrats for finishing with the selection
https://youtu.be/TsX9PTjO2-k 

Re the lack of sprint, I know that feeling—at a Floyd race in a long 6 man break with the bunch closing, I took a big pull before the last KM (thinking I'm strongest for the sprint), open up the sprint and there's just nothing going on. 6th place. I'd expect that if you take a look at your zones, you'll find you were burning way too many 400W+ matches during the race. 

Next crit:
- do some stalking and find the most experienced, largest, strongest, winningest rider so you can sit on their wheel like glue
- keep off the front, period
- practice getting free rides off people moving up
- get more comfortable riding a couple of inches closer to the wheel (that will save you a ton of watts—your videos should be 90% bum filled).
- you have to be 6th or better at 250M. I don't think you cracked top ten on the last lap, that puts you ten wheels further away from the finish line.

Wow, that guy (Sebastien Houillot - Cat4)  was on the front and pulled that whole group on the last lap, then was last of that group - placed 22nd.  Not a wasted effort, though, looks like he was pulling his teammate, who got 11th.  A big effort, and hard, long leadout.  Kudos to him for the effort and the Team sacrifice.  On Youtube, he says he deliberately did it for his teammate.  Well done.

First, congrats to Sebastian and Ulrike on their great results, and to everyone who accomplished the goals they had going into the races. I signed up for Cat 4 and Cat 3/4 wanting a day of tough racing. My goals were to finish in the main group, helping teammates where I could, and to build fitness. Mostly I looked forward to practice racing crits, which in the past have really given me fits.

The ignoble tradition continues. 

I've been mulling over my performances (DFL and DNF), and the most frustrating thing is, I don't see a tidy lesson to be learned, something that I can point to and say, "If I'd just done this better, I could've met my goals." It simply feels like I was in the race, and then suddenly I wasn't--and I was off the back much sooner than I expected.

The closest I've come to insight results from something I tried for the first time: I chose not to display my heart-rate data on my Garmin during the race. Looking at it after the races, I saw that my avg HR was in the low threshold zone, and my max HR stayed below levels I've seen when I'm out training short, intense efforts like those in crit racing. Maybe I shouldn't think too hard about this data, since the shorter the interval the less useful heart-rate tracks the effort. Then again, maybe my lesson from Saturday is...pedal harder? The simplest advice is sometimes the hardest to put into practice, but I plan to try. 

I want to like crits. They're fast and aggressive. They're unbowed by a century of decorum and nationalism calcified in European racing. They're easy to spectate. They're one of the earliest forms of bike racing to take root here in the U.S. You can race multiple times in one day. They're resourceful, revealing new aspects of whatever urban or suburban streetscape they temporarily occupy. They reward technical skill. Crits speak to ideals--egalitarianism, authenticity, thrift, meritocracy, populism--that form the bedrock of a familiar and powerful cultural mythology.

But man, I seem to be especially bad at racing crits. Though I'm up for the challenge of getting better. If in three years I've quietly disappeared from the local racing scene, but you see me in a video from the most recent L'Eroica, kitted out in high-end wool, explaining that I haven't done much racing since I pitched an advertising campaign to luxury goods conglomerate LVMH that uses the unrivaled courage and historic legacy of Fausto Coppi to sell five-figure wristwatches, then you'll know how I fared.

@Brendan Rigby

Thanks for the video.

Was the wind coming from the southwest?  It seems as if it was.  And if that was true, then your race was probably lost from being on the right side of the field on so many trips down Riverside.

Overall, good positioning.  

Nice moving up on first lap.  

In turns, you appeared to be more confident than many in front of you—you seemed able to make up ground on many corners.  

On the last lap, you seem tired, but watching the turn onto 122nd, and then onto Riverside, you passed several people who were dying.  Then another group got around you.  But it's hard to figure out good positioning once turning onto Riverside going north.  It's easy to get swamped if you're at the front and not going hard enough.  And it's easy not to be able to move up if you wait too long.

Max,

Crits are hard, man. Don't get down on yourself. They require a very specific kind of fitness and involve a lot more mental chess than people give them credit for.

If you're really serious about improving why don't you head over to twitter or facebook and throw yourself on the mercy of Adam Myerson; he knows a thing or two

Jules said:

Max,

Crits are hard, man. Don't get down on yourself. They require a very specific kind of fitness and involve a lot more mental chess than people give them credit for.

If you're really serious about improving why don't you head over to twitter or facebook and throw yourself on the mercy of Adam Myerson; he knows a thing or two

@MaxThorn

The former, I agree with Jules.  The latter, you can do better.  Like coming out to the track this weekend.

The HR data might not be telling--if you were tired or not warmed up enough, you weren't going to get high HR data no matter how well you were going.  

At this point, you're already working on fitness, so the mental and skills things you can work on.  Watch the videos Sebastian and Brendan provided.  Are you getting as close to riders as they did in the corners?  Were you pedaling at all through the corners?  How did you manage the turn from Claremont on to 122nd?  Where did you position yourself in the wind?  

And with fitness, there's a difference between indoor fitness and outdoor.  And solo riding and group riding.  Most folks have spent much of their season thus far riding alone, and much of that time inside.  That could have been working against you, though it was working against most everyone.  

It always sucks to go off the back but I'm not too down about it--crits are only one kind of bike racing. That said, one obstacle to improvement would be developing a sense of "oh well, whatever" fatalism about a very common discipline that, when done well, looks fun. 

I'll be out at the track this weekend. If I don't go down to Philly to race a crit, that is.

I figured as much about the HR data. But I can't shake the sense that I could have gone deeper in the moments I lost contact. It's not like my eyes were popping out of my head. 

I've watched the videos. Your questions are exactly the ones I've been asking myself. The stretch of Riverside after 122nd was more difficult than the turn onto 122nd from Claremont, which I tried to take inside-out: inside because people seemed to leave a good line open, then moving over to the other side of the road so when we made the right turn onto Riverside, I'd be sheltered from the wind. Of course it doesn't always work out that way, but that was my plan. More problematically, I think, is that I didn't take that northbound straightaway seriously enough as a pass-or-be-passed section, and that set me up poorly for the u-turn and the southbound stretch. It was on this northbound section of Riverside that I went off the back in the 4 race. I remember feeling stuck behind some slow wheels, then it was over. It was on the southbound section where I went off the back in the 3/4 race. I was out on the right hand side of the road, more exposed to the wind than if I'd been on the left-hand side. I was in the middle of the group, then I was alone in the wind wondering how I'd blown it, then a second group swallows me up (I realized we'd been splitting the field), then I was spit out the back door. Happened real quick. 

I can count on two hands the number of times I've trained indoors this winter, though I will cop to riding alone more often than not. (Don't most people?) If these were factors, they were working against most everyone, as you noted. I actually went into the race thinking I had an advantage here. I saw a number of riders at Grant's that I hadn't seen at Branch Brook the weekend before, where I'd raced twice.

@MaxThorn  first off, major props for lining up and racing.

The very first crit I did was Harlem Skyscraper where I was promptly discarded by the field after 4 laps.  It was the first time I had ever not finished a race (or any sporting activity) unrelated to injury and it was humiliating and irritating.

I am far from being good at crits.  I am by no means a seasoned racer.  But speaking as someone who went from getting dropped in crits to doing okay at crits, I think the two most important adjustments I made were:

1. Racing at the front - The easiest way to race at the front is line up at the front.  Seems obvious, but it never occurred to me until I saw Jeff W. make it a point to worm his way right to the front of a race field many years ago. Now how to stay at the front?

2. Being "fearless"/confident with bike handling and bumping - I am weak. I need to hide. I need to scamper between and behind bigger, faster, stronger riders. I learned to be confident and predictable and possessive in my moves to find these little temporary shelters from the wind. I'm not afraid to be millimeters from someone's rear wheel to get maximum draft potential (assessing their predictability of course).

Particular types of fitness and mental grit are needed of course, but the above two adjustments I feel were most important to me 

PSA

I believe JP likes to say something like "it never gets easier, you just get better" in his training talks.

google tells me the quote is actually Greg LeMond: "it never gets easier, you just get faster"

max, i'm no crit master, but one thing that helped me is--forgetting if bertucco or JP told me this-"if you're not moving forward, you're going backward".  this is probably a good tip for you because you said you felt like you got stuck behind slow wheels.  knowing when to get off a slow wheel is a skill developed over time.

it's really easy to get tunnel vision and watch the wheel or two in front of you while completely losing sight of the front of the race.  then suddenly you're on the back. then you're off the back.  this happened to me in the last crit that I DNF'd (fort lee like 2 years ago before i took a long racing vacation).  key is to exercise a constant level of aggression to maintain position relative the front of the race.  you will work so much harder getting yo-yo'd through turns on the back.  you need to be towards the front so that turns are good rest periods

Brendan's right: be aggressive! Crits are a battle of wills—you need to be aggressive to win. It's easy to fall into the trap of accepting the hand dealt to you—you have to be of the mind that you rightfully belong top 15, get there quickly and act like you do.

Once you've gotten that mindset you have a bunch of new challenges:
- many other riders have same plan and want to push you off the nice wheel you've found there (avoid letting this happen, be comfortable bumping and leaning, be persistent)
- anticipation—seeing what's coming from behind you and constantly adjusting position so you can't be boxed in (think of all those times 20 riders swept past you and you found yourself suddenly midfield).
- you may have to take a pull on the front. On occasion, you'll be compelled to participate,  This should be a 5 sec roll through, not a half lap on the front. The goal in every race is: eat their lunch, before you eat your own.
- be ready and watching for attacks, assessing the threat and anticipating the reaction or a need for action (response should be driven by your agreed team tactics for race).
- The throne. I've talked about this position before. It's the spot about tenth wheel where riders go backwards as others move up. Like the eye of a storm you can (sometimes) just hang there and surf it. You'll find sprinters like this spot, a lot. 
- Eat their lunch before you eat your own. Sun Tzu The Art of War... the idea is to win with your resources and objective intact (to still be respected by other teams). This is accomplished by: "one, removing your competitor's hope for victory, two, using all of your advantages, three, exploiting your competitor's weaknesses, and four attacking along an unexpected line." 

I'm saying all this with the assumption that the rider is comfortable riding close quarters and has the requisite skills/ability so other riders aren't terrified to be near their wheel.
JP and others I'm sure can add more to this.  

So much good above.

One of the good things about crits is you can usually fairly quickly suss out who is good to follow and who isn't.  You should be able to tell who is comfy in the pack, who knows how to line up for a corner, who is in the right gear going into the hill, and so on.  If the person in front of you appears to do any of these things poorly, try to get around them stat.

Another "trick" is to follow good crit riders.  Do some results stalking before going to a race, know who is expected to do well.

Follow a trusted teammate.  

When you realize you're behind a back marker, you know its time to move up.  

here are pictures from Grant's Tomb:
https://flashframe.io/event/130/all/0/#/20/

I love how the first pic of the series is a kissena triple bike lean

Here's where I lost the plot at Grant's Tomb this year.

https://flashframe.io/photo/355875/

It's 13 to go.  Thanks to the crosswind coming from the southwest, the field basically was strung out in the gutter every time we went south on Riverside.  We were on the white line for the parking lane or even, in some cases, in the lane.  I was thinking someone was going to ride into a parked car pretty much every lap.

On this particular lap, I came out of the U-turn almost on Stephen Dioslaki's wheel.  He's one of the people I use to tell myself I can't be more than a bike or two behind him in a crit.  We were about 15 guys back or so.  Problem was, a big guy from Zipcar tried to get behind him was starting from  Dioslaki's right.  In other words, he was getting zero shelter from Dio' or anyone.  He tried to move onto Dioslaki's wheel, but I was trying to get that, so I pushed him with my hand a few times because I didn't want to lose the wheel and I didn't want him to take me down.  After a few pushes, I had to relent and I let him have Dio's wheel.  Big mistake.  He let a gap open.  And he wasn't going to give me room on the left to pass him (don't know if he was trying to help  his teammates ahead or just clueless), so I had to go on his right.

As I tried to sprint across the gap, I could tell I didn't have what it took to really contest the rest of the race.  And I gave up.  My mistake.  While I couldn't have raced for a placing, finishing should have been enough.  I assumed that if I was suffering that badly, those behind me were pretty much soon to be goners as well, and I didn't want them crashing into a car trying to stay on.  Turned out, the field eased up the next lap, the break went a few laps later, and the field pretty much let them go.  Should have been able to finish.

Getting guttered every lap because of the crosswind is one of the differences between racing in the 1/2's and most other fields.  The guys at the front figure that if they're going to be in that position, they shouldn't give anyone behind them any gifts.  So they hugged the left side, providing almost zero shelter to those behind them.  This made the southbound Riverside sector almost like a hill, where the guys at the back weren't having much of an easier time, if any, than those at ht front.  

Watching Sebastians and Brendan's videos, it seems that people in their fields were giving plenty of shelter and not taking advantage of the course.  If you're at the front, make it worth your while.  Attack or block or chase, and if you're not doing any of that, make it so people can't take advantage of you.  Otherwise, fade back so you can take advantage of those riding stupidly at the front.  

BTW, at the point I got dropped, my normalized power was 3w higher than my normalized power for last year's race.  286w.  So, even with the cold, we were going just as hard.  Fewer attacks, but more high-wattage drags down Riverside.  

Wow. Not often you get a photo of the exact moment.

Registration is now open for GT.  Saturday, 3/10/2018.  No idea what the weather will be like this year, but we appear to be heading toward milder, or at least average, temps.
Fees go up each week.
https://www.bikereg.com/crcagrantstombcrit

Didn't even realize this is the NYS crit champs race.

I'm registered for the 1/2.  

anyone joining?

David Yang said:

Didn't even realize this is the NYS crit champs race.

Ack!

I didn't either.

Looking at the masters 45-54, the field is small thus far, but with Wilson Vasquez showing up with teammates and Kevin Molloy as well, it's going to be hard to figure out how to get away without either of them, or the other JP.  

hmmmmm.  Must think.  (my kids have an event I'm expected to go to as well the runs from 11-3)

DO IT!

Christ that is a GAGGLE of ex  Kissena’s!!
update that Instagram account Juley Bird

Crickets...?

I was at a CLE

I only race on Zwift now because....assimilate...assimilate...assimilate

I raced, in kit no less. you can read about it
https://kissenacycling.vanillaforums.com/discussion/1311/fat-bike-birkie#latest

still don't know my result.

I did the 1/2/3 open state championship.  Foundation, which also sponsors the pro team CCB Velotooler showed up all in Foundation jerseys.  Weather Channel was out in force.  So was Jamison (formerly Lupus), which pretty much seemed to mean Alan Rego and Scott Savory.

For better or worse, the biggest feature of the race was the headwind down the finishing straight.  The second biggest feature seemed to be guys getting used to turning fast again.

I didn't have much trouble sitting in excelled at the corners, but had a hard time at turn one, with all the bunching and squirrellyness of it, and then had to be mindful of the bad cornering for the rest of the race.  I didn't feel I had much snap--I could move up, but didn't feel my legs were in good attacking mode.

For the early part of the race, I was just trying to get a sense of the race rhythm.  It didn't seem like there was either the desire or the legs for a sustained breakaway.  I split seemed more likely, but even that wasn't happening.

It was going to be a sprint.  But, when I needed to move up in the final laps, I got slowed by having the wrong people get in front of me at the wrong time.

On the last lap, I was out of contention, so I ended up coming in at the back of the group.  Probably midpack.  Savory won and Rego was third.  Really good considering Savory was the favorite and didn't have a team.

First race of the year for most, not surprising you don't feel like you have break-making legs yet. Things looked very dry I'm surprised about the cornering.