The 4th of July Crit has lots of turns and only one real straightaway. The race was not very demanding fitness-wise, but required a good deal of pack skills to stay near the front. Of course, my pack skills aren’t so great so I ended up being filtered to the back. I was tail-gunning for the first half of the race and decided I should move up, so I sprinted hard into the finishing straightaway and made up quite a few spots… until someone decided to crash right in front of me. I avoided the downed rider and found myself right back where I started. Later on, I tried a different technique and moved up a few spots at a time on the straights and corners until I was somewhere in the first third of the pack. Following a prime, everything slowed down, the pack bunched, and I ended up at the back again. I stayed where I was for the last few laps, avoided a big pileup on the bell lap, and rolled across somewhere in the bottom 10.
This race definitely highlighted one of my weaknesses: maintaining position in the pack. In collegiate races, maintaining your position near the front of the pack isn’t as important because with the smaller fields, you can move up very quickly late in a race. In these USCF races, you can’t expect to be able to do that. I guess it’s a skill that will improve with time and experience.
Fun race!
