Wente Vineyards Classic Criterium 4/25/2010

Category: W1/2+3
Field Size: 29+21
Length: 50 minutes
Teammates: Josie, JVM, ME, Annie, Rikke, Kim
Places: 7th (ME), 2nd Cat 3 (me)

The course was a flat clockwise 1.2 mile loop. The corners were all fairly wide and not particularly sharp. There were three chicanes, so even though all the real corners were to the right, we still had to deal with finding a good line through the chicanes. One neat thing about the course was that the land inside the loop contained very little except some tall grass, and the announcer was up high enough that he could see the racers on the far side of the course and pretty much the whole way around, so there was always a great commentary going. There was an abundance of Botts dots, but that's pretty standard for office park crits. We did have to cross them more than usual on the chicanes, but still they should have been a minor annoyance. It should have been a nice clean race, but unfortunately, it wasn't.

The race started off at pretty fast pace, and there were a number of attacks. I started near the back as usual, and I wanted to get a feel for how the pack took the turns and really the whole course. Only a few laps in (I wasn't counting), there was a crash. It happened on the first corner, which was really a long sweeping turn, not really a corner, but I saw it before it happened because I noticed that there were a couple of people bumping each other in an attempt to take a line on the inside of the Botts dots on the outer part of the turn. Having suspected that a crash was about to happen, I had time to move a bit to the right and when they went down, I still had to practically slam my brakes but was able to go around the downed riders and catch up the pack fairly easily. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning. Only moments after we were all back together, another crash happened on the first chicane. I didn't see exactly what caused it, but I think someone just moved sideways into someone else and hit too hard and people started going down. I was far enough behind that crash that I was able to brake hard and swerve left around the pile of riders, but it was a little scary to see. I definitely saw one rider trying to swerve left just as it was happening in an attempt to escape and keep going, but then she went down and made the crash take up twice as much room on the road. The pack regrouped again, with somewhat diminished numbers, and the race went on. A couple of people who had gone down without injury took their free lap and got back in, including Annie.

After those back to back crashes, I was hoping the field would settle down a bit and ride a little safer, but it still seemed pretty hectic. I was getting a bit nervy after the crashes, so I wasn't making any moves and was still in the back, so JVM came back and helped me move up through the field by coming around the outside. That lap ME went for a prime, so I just got to sit up front for a bit before people started coming around me. When I started drifting back in the pack, I got almost claustrophobic because people were coming around me at alarmingly tight clearances, and having already seen two crashes happen I was a little nervous. Luckily, I didn't freak out and just held a good line and everything was okay. Unfortunately, it didn't last, because around 25 minutes in there was a third crash, this time just around the second chicane (I think). I was behind this one too, and braked to a near stop in order to miss hitting people on the ground. After that, we all got back together, but they soon neutralized us and we did a couple of laps neutral before they just stopped us. There were two girls that got seen to by ambulances, I think, one in each of the second and third crashes. We were delayed by probably 15 minutes, waiting for the ambulances to clear the course. My team got together and had a little chat, but we tried not to talk about the crashes, just a bit of strategy. We didn't want to think about the crashes because it might make us too nervy.

After the delay, we started back up with only 5 laps to go, due to time constraints. I think people were riding a little more conservatively, due to all of the crashes. Unfortunately, there was one more crash. A girl hit a Botts dot while standing up to accelerate and her front wheel turned more than 90 degrees and she toppled headfirst into the ground. It happened right after the final corner, so after that we couldn't take it very wide because she was still in the road being seen to by medical. I think due to her location on the course, they chopped off another lap from our race, because I'm fairly certain that one lap the cards said 3 to go, and the next it was the bell lap. On the last lap, I moved up through the field a fair amount, mostly by moving up the left side in the wind. I gave the pack a wide berth when I was coming up because there were a lot of other people looking for opportunities to move up and sometimes they'd move left without looking to see if there was someone already moving into that space. Anyway, in the final stretch, which was very long, I basically just stayed by myself on the left, and I was even keeping pace with the front of the pack on the right, but I had burned too much energy getting there. I lost some ground and finished maybe 12th or so. However, I did pretty well anyway, because there was only one Cat 3 ahead of me, and the 3's were being picked separately, so I got 2nd place. When it was over, I was mostly just happy that I hadn't crashed, and that no one on my team had crashed.

Since the race was sponsored by Wente Vineyards, of course the prizes were partially wine. I won $15, a $13 bottle of Wente Vineyards wine (2008 Morning Fog Chardonnay), and a T-shirt (size large). I suppose I should be glad that I didn't win any of the primes that consisted of gift cards for Wente Vineyards, since then I wouldn't even have been able to redeem them. As it is, I think it's hilarious that I won something that I can't legally buy, and that I have no interest in drinking. Maybe I'll just keep it around as a trophy.