how does the pain of a crit compare to a time trial?
worse?
different?
we have a “group ride” here in Austin that is pretty close to a crit at times…man it hurts me so bad
Here’s a story I wrote last year after my first crit. I tried to capture what it felt like physically.
I entered the Nashville Cyclist 2008 Criterium Series on a lark. It seemed like it would be fun. I like riding fast and hard, and I thought it would be a real rush to ride in a pack of other cyclists on the very edge of control. My coach was less enthusiastic. We’ve spent a lot of time this year training for the much more individualized triathlons that I truly love, and with the risk of a crash so much higher owing to the fact that in a criterium, the skill and actions of other riders can have a major impact on finishing the race intact, his pragmatism was understandable. I have never raced a crit before, but understood the race format-a short, technical, looping course would be set up in a large parking lot, and racers race for a set amount of time based on their experience level (or CAT, short for category) and then there is an all out sprint of 1 or more laps to determine the final winner. Drafting and keeping the bike under you are two major keys to success.
The course was set up in the parking lot of LP field, where our Tennessee Titans play. 2km in length and with 8 turns, it was a fun course to ride as I waited for the races to start. A couple of good straights and mostly flat or gentle downhill with only one slight rise meant I could really build some speed and dive into the corners. It’s actually pretty exciting to watch, unlike the less spectator-friendly triathlons that I race, in which the bike legs are typically run on big, open road courses over several miles. I signed up as a CAT 5 racer, meaning that I would be pitted against the least experienced racers in the group.
At least that was the idea.
I was assigned number 266 for the season. I paid my 20 bucks and waited. Warmed up on the course and checked out some of the other racers. I was expecting to see shaky, overweight thrill seekers, the same sort of people I see nervously fussing about in the transition areas of triathlons before races, not knowing that they’re just waiting to get their asses handed to them by me and my buddies. We lick our chops for those guys. We can’t wait to give them a little nudge in the lake or a half-hearted word of encouragement on the run. In a triathlon, I’m in my element. I feel like I’m at the top of the food chain, either by skill or association, but tonight the air was different. There were some freaking stallions hanging out! Everybody seemed to be sitting on an impossibly light and horrifyingly expensive custom-built-and-hand-welded-by-Satan-himself titanium and carbon racing machine. Everybody except me. I was on the sub $1000, heavy steel road bike I use for early season training. Don’t get me wrong, I spent my money on an expensive time trial bike for triathlons, but it isn’t legal to ride it in a crit. Not that I would anyway. The chance of wrecking is too high. One wrong move, mine or someone else’s, and I could have a $6000 paperweight. I have great health insurance, but I can’t afford to fix my bike. As the women’s race finished and the call went out for the CAT 5 racers to line up I remembered some old poker adage about not spotting the sucker at the table within two minutes…
GO!
I missed a pedal clip right off the bat, and had to try again. By the time I looked up, 8 or more riders were rounding the first corner. I spun furiously. I was warmed up, my left hip flexor hurt a little bit from a nagging injury, but I knew it would calm down once I got going. I fell into the draft and focused on keeping up. I planned to stay with the lead pack until the end, just before that last lap, then I would make my break and leave them all wondering who in the hell that guy in the black shirt was. Surely I could hold them off for a few minutes. Just long enough to take the win.
After all, I had planned it out.
I had visualized it.
It was how I was used to racing.
My plan worked for maybe 3 laps. A total of about 5 minutes into the 20 minute/one lap race before I started to crack. We were averaging 20 mph in the beginning, before the leaders decided to pick up the pace. It completely broke the draft up. Suddenly, it was every man for himself. I quickly went anaerobic trying to latch on as riders with matching outfits who were obviously familiar with each other hooked up and whizzed by me, not wanting the new guy sucking their wheels. I was a risk for them. I wasn’t affiliated with their teams, didn’t buy my stuff from their stores, had a cheap bike, and wore the wrong clothes. Yeah, I was a day tripper. A tourist. They had clocked me for it right from the beginning. I wasn’t going to get any help from these guys.
That’s alright, I thought.
Drafting is for pussies.
That’s why it’s not allowed in triathlons.
I geared a cog or two softer and picked up my cadence on the small rise after the first big corner. Shifted aggressively on the subtle downhill at the back of the course and dove sharply into the corners, riding the razor edge of my worn tires. I could feel it as they started to roll out from under me. I was just about to wash out when I pulled up, jumped out of the saddle and slung my bike left and right wildly to regain speed. I cut off a rider who tried to pass me on the inside of the next turn. The lead pack had formed up again, and they were getting away from me.
I was riding like a bat out of hell. It felt like my eyeballs were going to explode behind my glasses and spill out trails of thick, bloody juice down the front of my shirt, leaving my hollow eye sockets to make a low whistle like someone blowing across the top of an empty coke bottle. Like a train. The pain train. My mouth was full of sour, acid bile and my legs felt like they had just come out of a furnace, red-hot and being hammered on by a cackling, sadistic blacksmith. I was holding 24mph all by myself, fully 4mph faster than I ride at race pace in a triathlon, and that’s on my other bike that’s 5 pounds lighter and a hell of a lot more comfortable.
I looked up and saw the lead pack had left me for about half a lap. Half a lap at least. I might as well have been on a Big Wheel. I had been dropped like a cheating boyfriend. They were all hanging out at about 80 rpms to boot, as if on a leisurely Sunday ride. Lined up wheel to wheel tight and taking it easy before the final dash to the finish. I looked down at my timer to see how much longer I had to keep this up before I could go home to lie about how well I’d done to my parents.
12 minutes in.
8 more minutes to go, plus a lap.
Fuck. Me.
Demoralized, I seriously considered pulling out and quitting. I have never, ever, done that in a race before. I’ve felt like shit from start to finish in races. I’ve thrown up, cramped, twisted ankles, swallowed brackish lake water, and been dehydrated to the point of questioning my sanity and all my beliefs, but I have never gone there. Quitting midway through a race has never been an option for me. Until now. I knew there was no way I was catching the lead pack by myself. They were simply too fast. Behind me there were 10 or so riders all broken up like the walking wounded on a battlefield two days after the troops have marched off into the distance. It was useless to try and put together a group of these bozos to try and catch the leaders. If I slowed down to try and start a draft with them they’d just blow by me, too stupid to realize the power of working together. I realized these were the real CAT 5ers, and I was one of them.
I eased up a little. Not much, but a little. No reason to get hurt or crash my bike now. The laps went by slowly as I tried to keep the leaders in sight. It was time to adjust my goals. I had to fight off a racer who nipped at my heels, but he didn’t have enough to really get away. I hung in behind him until he tired himself out, and then took him in a corner. I was thinking about what I needed to do to salvage this race in the last 2 minutes or so to make it an acceptable performance.
Set a PR for average speed?
Commit to competing X number of races in the rest of the series, for better or worse?
Read a book about criterium strategy or, (gasp!) ask one of the more experienced riders for advice?
The rising crescendo approaching from behind me sounded like an attacking swarm of Evil Bees From the Center of the Earth. Realizing the lead pack was about to pass me again snapped me back into the race and solved the problem of how to salvage this performance at the same time. Don’t get lapped. It was simple. Stay ahead of the lead pack. Even if they caught me, I could get back into their draft, hang in no matter what and and then sprint to the front at the finish. I’d still have a lap to go, but I’d stay on the lead lap for the whole race. I geared up, took a deep breath, and gave it everything I had. Every last bit of power and energy was going to be needed stay in it as the man rung the cowbell at the start line ahead.
1 lap to go.
In the lead pack, all bets were are off.
One rider became 15 or more as they split from behind each other like those dudes from The Matrix. I saw as I looked underneath my armpit that they were coming toward me like a tsunami. A wall of riders, all out of the saddle, whipping their rides back and forth in furious time with each other. Leaned out over their handlebars with teeth bared, it looked like a pack of wild dogs. A school of giant, hungry pirahnah. Every single one of them was hell-bent on one thing. The finish. And here I was. The day tripper, the tourist, in between them and it. I thought about what I would do to me if I were them.
Oh shit.
Listen. I found something in those next few moments. I reached down deep, like they say on TV, and found a place inside of me that I’ve been unable to reach in the last two years of training for triathlons. A whole new level. The pain melted away, destroyed in its own intensity. The wind was a rising scream in my ears that got higher and higher until I couldn’t hear it anymore. Tunnel vision. All that cliche stuff. I pounded that last lap like it was the home stretch of my last race ever, and I had known it going in.
In the end, it didn’t make a difference. Most of the lead pack riders passed me like I was sitting still. I was simply outclassed, and in way over my head. I coasted a lap to cool off and get my heart rate down. I went to the pit area where I had left my girlfriend and my oldest son, who it turns out had left at some point during the race to go the gas station across the street and make himself a sickening mix from the soda fountain that would most likely give him epic diarrhea and a sleepless night. It was just as well. My girl was proud of me, she told me so, but in her eyes I could see. She knew I got smoked like a fresh trout out there. There was no hiding it.
Though my first criterium race was certainly one of the most humbling experiences of my life, I left with mixed feelings. I was upset that I had so badly underestimated the level of competition, and had overreached my own ability at the same time, but I had learned something invaluable about myself. I learned that I could push through. When I wanted to, I really could. I was faced with a humiliating defeat on the course, but I was in complete control of myself. Even under the worst type of pressure and pain. I remembered an old adage about pain being temporary.
I knew I would be back.
Much deeper and darker pain cave than a tri for sure.
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