ilpirata87

Is anyone coming out for the Wake Forest weekend?
I can't make the collegiate rr, but I will be at the collegiate A and USCF 3 crits on Sunday in downtown W-S, hoping for no rain.

wanders

I surveyed the course this morning. The 10 feet of rise over 200 yards on the backside doesn't portend well for me.

cnickgo

I'll be there racing D's. Look for App w/ a carolina blue Fort.

acorn_user

I hope so. I'm terrible at crits, so I'm looking forward to Saturday more!

I saw a blue Fort at WVY last week. How did that go? Now that was a beast of a course..

cnickgo

My first race weekend.. TT was horrible.. No warmup we arrived at 3:30 and I went off at 4:10. RR was much better... went off the front until 11 miles in. The course was fun if you took away the thousands of potholes/roadkills/and that washed out section.

aicabsolut

10' ?? That's nothing.

I'll be there, and I'm probably sticking around for the W4 crit on Sunday. No TTT team for Saturday, so I'll be spending the afternoon in my old 'hood down towards the other end of tobacco road.

Also hoping for warm, dry races (for once!).

recneps

No come to Charleston, seriously Saturdays course is the best one of the year well maybe its tied with I think Mocksvilles crossroads crit.

wanders

At 215#, it'll feel like a 5% grade.

recneps

I mean in reality its a 1.1% grade so theres no way to coast up it.

wanders

I'm just lowering expectations. I'm barely pack fodder on a dead flat circuit. Add in any inclination and gravity quickly takes hold. I hope there's wind. That will slow those 150 pounders down some - I hope.

aicabsolut

I really thought about it, especially with the party at the Irish pub after Saturday's race. It's on my way back home to Savannah to watch the Tour de Georgia kick off. I decided I should try to finish out the collegiate season and get the school to help pay for my hotel instead.

acorn_user

So, how did it go?

I was following our team game plan and attacked on lap 1. Amazingly, they let me have a lap of glory off the front and out of sight before bringing me back. I then used my last shot to attack again and set up one of my team mates.

The crit did not quite go to plan. I had planned on a kamikaze attack, but a group of three got away and swept the primes. I got in a dumb position on the last lap and got held up. I was pleased to finish the crit in one piece and in the pack, but disappointed to get 13th again and miss points again. Oh well.

ilpirata87

Well... The A race was fast as hell. The overall average was close to 26mph, some laps were clocked at 1:45 by a buddy of mine which would be around 27.5mph. Considering that there were 6 corners and many hills that's pretty solid. I just hung gamely on the back for the first 30 minutes, then saw a Va Tech guy attacking, so I was like "hells yes" and spent about 2 laps bridging. Then another Va Tech guy bridged with a Georgetown rider. Unfortunately I didn't know those were not the Va Tech guys that their team had "anointed" to win the race, due to conference series standings (of which I knew nothing) so the Hokies did squat work and their teammates did nothing to prevent us getting reeled in. Lame. Sat in the rest of the time, Matt from NCSU went on a flyer with 2 to go and won, Tech got 2-3-4. Fast = fun (apparently the p12 field had about the same pace as we did, which is a good sign for my chances as a 2.)

Acorn_user - that stinks that you got 13th! Points go 12 deep in the C's right? that's painful.
wanders - nice meeting you, i seem to remember you did pretty good in your race?

Anyone else do any of the uscf races?

wanders

A partial photographic depiction of ilpirata87's post. Sorry about the quality

"then saw a Va Tech guy attacking, so I was like "hells yes" and spent about 2 laps bridging."





"Then another Va Tech guy bridged with a Georgetown rider."




Me? I did better than I thought I would.

acorn_user

Thanks Ilpirata, I have the dubious distinction of two 13th places in a row after last weeks chain fiasco. My seasons goal was to score one point, but I just missed it. On the other hand, I think an epic solo breakaway should count for something, so I'm pretty happy. If I have form like this during the autumn, I might be able to take a cross race or two

btw, do you ride a Fondriest?

ilpirata87

yep that's me

CaseLawZ28

There were some real photographers on the course. Does anyone know what photography studio they were with or where photos will be posted?

truckin

Looks like fun. Charleston was a blast. Speedy races and good courses. Lots of strong guys out there.

aicabsolut

My friend got some great pics--

acorn_user, we've got one of you on your solo break in the RR

ilpirata, there are some good shots of you and your field, mostly in turn 5 I think.

PM me if you want some, and I'll put you in contact with the right person.

My RR was a total snooze. "Staging" for 45+min didn't really help much. A 2 lap (20mi) flat course didn't really rekindle the warmup. Still, I tried to race smarter and sat in until 4mi to go, at which point I decided that if my quads had a prayer at a sprint, I'd better warm up. I led a couple of attacks, actually got some help with them from those who really needed to protect their points, and we put the hurt on the field. Unfortunately, to really hurt the field we needed another lap...or 2. I followed what I thought was a good move at 1km to go, after we'd all regrouped a bit. It wound up being a bad move and I got completely boxed out in the sprint. I wound up hesitating instead of getting my front wheel removed or knocking another racer onto the shoulder. No one really spread out in the last 200m, probably because there was a DUMP TRUCK coming right at us---no one was doing traffic control. The farthest anyone moved left was just around the centerline. Mediocre 9th place for me. My sprinting has been sucking, so at least I got some practice out of it. I think I really would've done better if our race was much longer. It was a joke. Not even long enough for a cat4 RR.

The crit was scary. Several bad crashes. The road was wet from the rain the night before and morning mist. The hardest turn had 1) crappy chewed up pavement on the stretch before the turn where you'd want to brake, 2) wet surface with tons of gravel and sand on the ideal line (based on my watching the A race later), and 3) manholes and seams with even more sand on the more conservative, slower line--provided you were able to do any braking based on #1. It was a pretty technical turn anyway--off-camber, downhill to uphill, wide to narrow, greater than 90*. I did a lot of work chasing down breaks and avoiding crashes and trying to keep myself upright after I don't know if I locked up a wheel (I wasn't breaking hard) or if I just hydroplaned, but my bike went all bananas on the straight, in the rough pavement, just heading into that turn. I probably laid down my best sprint effort to date, but it was only good enough for 5th, and I got knocked out of the top 3 in my category.

I really hated the whole weekend. The road surface on all of the crit was pretty horrible. Looking at all the road rash on Sunday, it was obviously a rough course. The RR was boring as hell, and 1/2 the length of the first road race of the season, which was also fast but at least had a few rollers. The start times were insanely early. All to fit in an afternoon TTT that was much longer than the lower cat road races. I would've rather done that course, but alas, I had no team, nor would team points have mattered for us. There was no organization on Saturday at all. Sunday improved there some.

Just mediocre. I hope they get it together for next year's championships, though I will not be there.

CaseLawZ28

I'm not collegiate, so I can only speak from the crit perspective. I thought the course was great. It was technical, some up hill, some downhill, some very important turns, and a good location. As far as road condition - that was pretty smooth. Do you race in newly laid subdivisions all the time? I've been in far worse conditions for road shape (without even batting an eye, have you been to Dixie?).

Congratulations to the Wake Forest and Winston-Salem Downtown Crit guys for a thoroughly enjoyable Sunday. Even the cops were nice!

aicabsolut

At least if you did the USCF race, the roads were dry and had been swept twice by that point (USNA had gotten fed up with the road conditions and volunteered to sweep it again after the early races). I'm not saying I always race on great roads, but to have manholes, potholes, and horrible road surfaces in all but one corner, come on!

I'd say it was even worse than their usual go-cart crit from past years that has several metal plates in the middle of it.

ilpirata87

The go-kart track you are referring to is the Dixie course. But I don't really see what was so bad about the downtown crit course, I thought it was a hell of a lot of fun. I could imagine it sucking if it was actually raining but other than that I didn't mind riding over a couple of manhole covers. Turn five was fairly nerve-wracking but you just had to be confident about choosing a line.

Yeah I'll bet navy was fed up...they got schooled in the A race by virginia tech.

aicabsolut

Your race was a lot of fun to watch, for sure. I wish mine had gone that well. I mean, I did fine, but after being too close to 2 of the crashes in my race in that corner, I never got confident in my line. Of course, most people weren't taking the line that your race took--I found out that was the best line for myself, but I was still nervous about it. Others were trying to stay too far to the inside and wound up laying the bikes down. The wet roads and sand at 8am didn't help.

It surely wasn't as crazy of a course as Navy or anything---oh, the irony! Still, just not that fun. It was challenging, and I'm satisfied with how I raced. I just didn't have any fun. Maybe I'm just grumpy about 8am start times .

aicabsolut

here ya go acorn_user:

acorn_user

Why thank you. Futile, but glorious!

it seemed like there was a mass conspiracy to have a field sprint. We (UVA) were almost the only active team. NC State had a dig, and one of the Hokies tried a flyer too, but that was about it. I can imagine that your race was similar.

The crit was tough. I was amazed, and delighted, I finished near the front. The corner at the bottom with the gravel was tough. There were a number of crashes there. A Richmond guy nearly lost it there on the final lap of my race. The roads were really bad too, but I do think the course was safer than the NC State course.