Alphalegacy

I recently entered the San Marcos Crit because some of my teammates are doing it, but I don't have much experience with crits and have been dropped from the few I have done. My goal for this crit is to finish with the pack but I have only one month to train. What kind of workouts should I be doing at this point? Thanks.

Daniel

botto 

work on cornering.

Duke of Kent

Do a crit every Sat/Sun until that date.

Metzinger

A little clean-up for you.
Attitude counts for a lot in these things.
Do some high intensity, and don't hang out the back when the race starts.

Shayne

+1

The cornering work too. If you can hold a wheel on the straights, work on holding it through the corners.

gsteinb

And tuedsay

SwimBike

Ride in circles as fast as you can.

Duke of Kent

And on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays as well. Whatever is offered locally.

kensuf

15 seconds on, 15 seconds off, repeat ad nauseum.

And cornering.

nitropowered

lots of 1 min and 5 min intervals.

nitropowered

I think its hard to work on cornering unless you are in a race. Its totally different cornering solo around an empty parking lot and with a bunch of other guys all around you.

Hida Yanra

I just decided to start racing again for the first time since over a year ago-
So last night I decided to race tonight. You can't replicate racing in training, so race lots.

botto 

i don't entirely agree.

gsteinb

I'm pretty sure the rules of geometry hold no matter what.

slim_77

picking a lane. holding a line. balance. leaning. looking through the turn. taking it in the drops. hoods. no hands. blindfolded. with other people. by yourself.

ridethecliche

I would say that the 15 sec on/off intervals are good for pace changes, but I'd also say that doing intervals say 3 min in tempo/sub threshold and then 2 min over threshold, for 10-15 mins is a good idea.

So 3-4 sets of these with 5 mins rest between a set. That's what my last crit felt like.

Ouch ouch ouch, recover recover recover recover recover, ouch ouch ouch, ad nauseum.

efficiency

San Marcos, CA? Which club are you on?

You could go to Fiesta Island on Thursday nights to practice riding in the pack.

Voodoo76

Disagree. Seeing the line, only turning once (number of times a rider turns in one corner seems to be directly related to Category, eg 5 = 5, this is what defines squirrelly). Good things to work on and you can perfect them solo.

Ideally I would find a 4 turn square, < 1K. Do 1m to 2m intervals on it, do slow laps jumping out of every turn or every other. Perfection would be having a buddy with a Motor bike (advanced riders only).

wfrogge

Thats what its all about.

mkadam68

Having ridden San Marcos: there's only 2 "real" corners, the others you're moving slowly or it's a sweeping arc.

Practice jamming up 200-yard hills (7%). Every 3-minutes. And immediate recovery at the top of the hill is 20mph+ at 2-4% incline.

Other than that, as long as you can handle yourself in a group, you'll do fine.

gsteinb

This thread is useless without graphs.

carpediemracing 

I'm an expert at getting dropped in crits Seriously, I make the finish in maybe 1/3 of the races I enter. So I'm writing as a real experienced person as far as getting shelled goes.

There are non-rider-centric problems like gaps in the field (tactics), crashes (tactics and understanding pack dynamics), etc.

There are two situations where I get shelled where it's basically conditioning (which is a rider-centric problem): Lack of speed (field ramps up to 42 mph and I am gone) and lack of recovery/fitness (field repeated attacks itself until I explode, even though I'm sitting in the whole time).

For the latter, you need fitness. A month isn't great but you can do 3 weeks of very hard, specific training. You can do short recovery intervals. Seems that mkadam68 knows the course, so either you go do it or find a similar loop and do that. Over and over. Way over threshold efforts, followed by short recovery, repeat.

I think sufferfest (google it) has intervals like that on his vids. 10s on, 50 off, 20/40, 30/30, 20/40, 10/50. I make the first one and then I explode. lol. Okay, I make 15-18 seconds of the second one.

The other thing is work on your max speed.
https://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.co...sprinting.html

If you can't go 40 mph (or whatever attack speed you need to respond to), then you'll have a hard time dealing with 40 mph attacks. Or whatever the speed.

For other rider-centric problems like group riding skills (for example, if you can't draft well, you'll be history), you need to simply ride with a group.

All this is a long way of saying what is in the sticky at the top of the forums:
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=380788

And more specifically:
1. Find some group rides, fast group rides. Sit in the back.
2. Don't get discouraged if/when you get dropped from those group rides.
3. Go back the following week and do the fast group ride again.
4. If you're dropped a 2nd time, repeat steps 2 & 3
5. Once you're comfortable with the group and pace (and vice versa), take some pulls.
6. Once you're comfortable taking pulls, try some attacks (if it's that kind of group ride).
7. Once you're comfortable with steps 5 & 6, it's time to enter a race.
8. At your first race, repeat steps 1-6, but substitute 'race' for 'group ride'.

Courtesy botto.

cdr

mattm

I've only done one real crit, but the advice I kept hearing was "just try to hold on for the first 10-15 mins" - does that apply to most?

We definitely slowed down after about 15 minutes, then it got somewhat easier. The pack was also about half the size it was when we started, which was kind of nice.

Voodoo76

Crits always slow down the lap after you get dropped, its a law of nature.

fauxto nick

Can't agree enough about cornering, you lose your ability/confidence to corner with the pack and you better either be a monster at doing intervals or get ready to be dropped.