Washington State Criterium Championship 7/8/12
Washington State Criterium Championship 7/8/12
What a great weekend for racing. The weather was fantastic. The State Crit Championship was held up in Bellingham. I arrived early and was able to watch several races. Blue Rooster had two guys go in Cat 4's with 2 laps and stayed away the whole time, to go 1-2. The course had 4 corners but only technically had 3 because the first corner was more of a bend up a slight rise. Then turn 1 was a right down onto the back straight and turn 2 and 3 were very fast short turns back on to the front straight.
In Cat 3's we had all the heavy hitters, guys who would be batting clean-up. We had a little over 30 in our field. This is now my 4th race in the Cat 3 field. All have been criteriums. I must say there seems to be far more crashing than there was in Cat 4's. The field is much more aggressive with corner entry. This tends to not end well. There are also several more risk takers in regards to moving around in the pack. I raced this course in 2009 and wrote about it here. I liked it then and thought I had a good chance at getting a good result. My talks with my future team began here. The goal was to get one of us on the top step. Of course that is everyone’s plan but we thought our chances were good. The plan was for Tony to go off the front with 1 or 2 laps left. He is a marked man in the Cat 3 field and they wouldn’t let him get a gap, but if they did then that was perfect. That would allow Jeff and I to follow the lead out train that we suspected would be Apex, since they had the numbers in the race. With 5 laps to go I began to move closer to the front in anticipation of the move that was possibly coming from Tony. In all bike racing having a plan is key but 90% of the time the entire plan doesn’t pan out as you hoped. Tony was never able to get out of the middle of the group with 2 laps to go so that plan was out the window. I was in a good spot with 1 to go when I could hear this deep, very deep yelling coming from the front. It sounded like something from a death metal band. Come to find out it was Travis from Apex yelling at his guys on the front. As they began exploding and falling back through the pack this caused all of us to swerve around them. This didn’t make for a very safe last lap and coming into turn 2 there were 2 lines that had formed as guys went around the left over lead out train of Apex. The unfortunate part is those two lines met each other in the middle of the Apex (no pun intended); wheels touched and down went an Apex guy. It was my former teammate at the beginning of the year, Todd. I watched him slide and smash into the curb and a street sign. OUCH. He did end up getting a ride in the wambulance and bent the street sign all things considered I saw him racing in August. I thought it was pretty bad as it looked really bad. I had a front row seat. Then coming out of turn 3 an HSP guy had his tire roll right off his rim and he slid over the sidewalk into the netting that was up to protect the grass maybe. With both of those accidents taking place in front of me it allowed a gap to open up. I really had no chance at a top 5. I should have been closer to the front but those are all what “ifs”. I don’t like playing those games and accept I should have been closer to the front. I was able to come home in 12th place with Tony taking 4th and Jeff taking 10th.
