My Chicago racing career, such as it was, came to an end on Sunday with the inaugural Chicago Criterium. I didn’t register in time for the Masters 4/5, so I and 119 others got to race the Cat 4s. Because I went with my teammate Michael, who was doing the earlier race, I was at the course with plenty of time to preview the course, warmup, and snag the primo starting position right on the front row. If ever there was a crit to make sure you got good starting position, this was it, not so much because of the course was highly technical, but more because with such a large field, if you started at the back, it would take an all out sprint to get to the front, if you could survive the accordion effect of the first few corners.
The race was scheduled for a meager 35′ + 2, so we knew it was going to be fast. When the Chief Judge shortened it to 30′ at the line, it was bound to be even faster. And fast it was, both in speed and in the officials’ timekeeping. According my PT, we raced a total of 27′. I had just settled in and begun to look for teamates when we came around to see 4 to go. Predictably, all hell broke loose and I never made it near the front. At one point I found my teammate Joe Bippus and tried to bring him to the front, but he popped. With two laps to go there was a crash right behind me because someone moved off his line in the penultimate turn causing us all to shift a bit. Whoever was behind me couldn’t make the adjustment and went down hard. At that point, with an out of state move less than a week a way, I backed down and did just enough to finish with the group, 34th overall.
The power numbers from the race puzzle me a bit; NP was fairly low (224), but the RPE was through the roof. For the first time in months, my asthma and acid reflux kicked in. While the power was lowish, the speed was high (26.5 mph), which may suggest the effort I felt may be due to neuromuscular efforts. That, combined with the extreme heat, pushing 90 in the sun, made the race feel a lot harder than the numbers suggest.
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