Georgia Southern Criterium Race Report

Georgia Southern Criterium
2/15/2009

Weather was dryer, but colder for the criterium. Course was a gentle one for a crit, more suited to be called a circuit to be honest. Ran counter-clockwise with one 90 degree turn and everything else was a sweeping turn.

The team warmed up the best they could, a few miles around the course. The C race started, Joe took one pedal stroke and broke his chain. He took 3 free laps while the onsite wrench fixed the chain and got him back on the course. Meanwhile, Barrett sat comfortably in the pack. Not long after Joe got back in the field, it started to speed up significantly. Slowly but surely, groups began to fall off the back. After a few laps of sitting in while the field attacked, Barrett slipped off the back with 4 other riders. While the rest of the dropped riders struggled to form alliances and ultimately got lapped, Barrett and his chase group rallied quickly and managed to hold off the field until the last lap. He worked super hard and looked comfortable in the paceline. Joe, who seemed pretty tired from his first Road Race the day before in addition to his chain mishap, sat in the pack and moved up on the last lap. He snagged 6th or 7th in the field sprint (Official results pending).

In the B race, the field was very small and stacked quite unevenly. About 5 laps in the first preme was announced. Curtis attacked for the preme, easily winning it before sitting up with Ryan Fisher (Florida). They let the pack catch them, and sat back in. Towards the end of the lap Ben from Clemson, who snagged 2nd in the Road Race, made his expected breakaway attempt. Curtis said choice words and chased on. Only Jared from GSU was able to follow them, and by the end of the lap they had 10 seconds. They kept at it, and by the 2nd lap they had 20 seconds. Within 5 laps the gap was over a minute and lapping the field was inevitable. Ben was driving super hard, Curtis was hurting a good bit, and Jared was sucking wind. A deal was made. Jared would not sprint for the win if he could skip some rotations. From that point Curtis and Ben did 90% of the work. Curtis told Ben that if he thought he could hold a faster pace to the end, to go for it, but otherwise hed have to ease up a bit. Deal #2 was formed. Ben would sit with them for another 10 minutes then make a move. The second deal didn’t work out, because the next lap they were 10 seconds behind the field. Ben, who isn’t a fantastic sprinter, didn’t want to risk having to sprint it out against Curtis, and using the field as a breather before launching a 2nd attack was a great strategy. Curtis let him go, figuring he would waste a lot of energy bridging up to the pack which seemed caught. Jared tried to hold Curtis’ wheel, but the acceleration ended him. He went into TT mode to stay away long enough to save 3rd place. Ben caught the pack about a half mile later, and his teammates picked up the pace. After a few laps of sitting in, Ben got a nice leadout from his teammate and launched his 2nd attack to keep Curtis off his wheel. After Ben got away, Curtis took a few laps but eventually caught on to the group. The GSU rider was left in the dust, barely visible behind the pack. Curtis sat in for a few laps, laughing and chatting with the other riders, then decided to drive the pace to make sure the GSU rider didn’t catch the pack. When the bell lap came around, he pulled off, wished the field luck and rode on the back of the pack , finishing easy and laughing. He made a few comments about how he preferred to be able to finish easy like that every time…we’ll see how much he smiles at the end of his first A race…Worth noting is that the top 5 contained the exact same riders as in the Road Race, but mixed up slightly.