Body Concepts Bicycle Race Team – Race Report: by John Kretschmann
Race: Folsom Winter Criterium
Date: 2013-02-09
Category/Field Size: Men 35+ 3/4 – Field Size 75
Quickie race report for the Folsom crit yesterday …
35+ 3/4 field, full with 75 riders. Only Randy Floyd & myself representing BC. Weather was near perfect. Course is wide-open, pavement is excellent. There were 9 primes and with 35+ and Cat 3s in the race I figured it was going to be a fast sufferfest. I was hoping for top-20 and would have been happy just to stay with the main field and not get dropped. Folsom Bike and Bike Plus were both well represented and I was expecting to see some team play.
Race didn’t exactly play out as expected. There wasn’t much teamwork and the pace, for the most part, wasn’t all that fast. The first couple of primes livened things up but after that it seems like most guys were content just to sit in. My goal was to try and stay in the top 10-to-15 riders and for the most part I did that. I contested one prime and got off the front once, for a brief moment, with one of the few attacks in the race.
With about 4 laps to go I moved forward and got good position going into the last lap. I saw 3 Bikes Plus riders setting up a leadout and got on the train with one other rider in front of me. The BP guys did a great job of going hard, peeling off one-by-one and coming into the final corner I was 3rd wheel. Picture perfect leadout. However, intuition told me that guys were going to try to come around and sure enough right before the corner they came blasting by on the left side. I hesitated, wanting to sit in until we rounded the corner but by the time I started my sprint the leaders had several bike lengths on my. My sprint was pretty weak but I may have still managed a top-10 finish.
Lesson learned: listen to your intuition and race for the win!!
By the way, I can’t think of a better venue to work on team tactics. If you’ve ever thought about racing a crit this may be one of the safest places to give it a try plus you can’t beat the convenience of having a race right in your own backyard. I’d like to see our team get at least 10 guys registered for the next Folsom Crit on May 11th!