What happened? Was the start too fast? No warmup? Missed a clip in?
A lot of times in crit races it can be imperative to close gaps down like stat, esp. if you aren't confident in your ability to do a TT-style effort for minutes at a time at higher than the average speed w/o blowing up.
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"Your beauty is an aeroplane;
so high, my heart cannot bear the strain." -A.C. Jobim, Triste