Faster Grand Prix Crits

Yesterday was a hard day. I did both the M55+ and the M65+ at the Faster Grand Prix Crit in Scottsdale. This is a short course, 0.6 miles, with one unusual 180 degree turn, that comes at the bottom of a hill and you immediately climb out of it. It made it difficult to maintain a fast speed and difficult for people to get away successfully.
First was the M55+ race with Lionel Space and a full cast of fast guys … no Dave Bixby though, thank goodness! I was doing this as a warmup for the M65+ race that followed immediately … we actually had about three minutes from the end of the M55+ and the start of the M65+.  I stayed with the front group until the last lap and then got gapped and didn’t want to spend the energy to get caught up. I think I got 5/6 out of 10.
In the M65+ race there were only six entries. I felt pretty good, and actually got away for awhile, but the group caught me after one lap solo. We dropped Norm Kibble pretty early in the race which was a real priority for me, since although Norm is out of shape, he still has a heck of a sprint (former national crit champ). On the last lap, I made a rookie mistake and let Bill Hydinger and Michael Patterson get ahead of me with two turns to go.  After making this mistake, I had no chance to catch Bill, who is riding very strong this year,  But I was closing very fast on Michael … however, I ran out of race track and he beat me by about six inches! Bummer! But I did get third place (medal and $10 … whoopeee!!), and won a prime lap (got a bottle of bike clothes wash). I also got some good crit experience as I really hadn’t done any crits this year except for VOS.

Overall, this was just what I wanted, a good warmup for the State Crit next Sunday … that will be my third “A” race of this year.