Edwardsville Crit

Due to my knee problems over the winter I got off to a late start with competitive cycling this year. I’ve been doing the Tuesday night practice crits at Carondelet Park the the past six weeks or so. Today I finally rode my first race race of the season, the Edwardsville Criterium.

The race started at 1pm. It was 97-ish˚F. A fairly large group started, seemingly well over 50. Despite my best effort to get towards the front at the start I found my way to the back of the pack and I spent the first third of the race yo-yoing off the back. I had to close a number of gaps left open by riders in front of me. By the halfway point I moved up about midway through the dwindling pack.

(photos from cat 3 race)

The race didn’t particularly suit me. It had seven corners, four of them sharp and narrow. Let’s just say cornering isn’t my specialty. It was flat. I prefer hills. It was hot. I’d take 40˚F over this any day. That having been said, I’ve been making strides in each of these areas.

When the lap-remaining count reached single digits I started moving up a few places each lap. When the bell rang with one lap to go I was sitting comfortably in the top ten and still moving up a bit. Unfortunately my efforts to move up from so far back took their toll and I had nothing left for the final sprint. I got swarmed with about 200m to go and fell to 17th before crossing the line. 42 riders finished.

So it was a good race, not great. This was actually the first cat 4 crit where I finished with the lead group (it’s been over a year since I last raced). It was also the first race where I brought my spare wheels to the wheel pit, though thankfully I didn’t have any mechanical incidents so I didn’t have to use them. There was one crash about five laps in that I safely navigated around. I don’t think anyone was injured.

I recognized a number of other rides from the Tuesday night races, but I don’t actually know any of them. The only person I knew there was former Wild Card rider Mike, who rode the cat 3 race later in the afternoon. That race had a nasty crash in the final corner of the final lap, with two or three guys flipping over the barricades into the crowd. Yikes!