|
Aaron Abrahams
Early Bird Criterium #1
2006-01-08
Result: ???
Juniors 13-14
Field: Around 10 or 15
Teammates: Peter Taylor, Adam Hodes, Alex Gee
This was the first of the 2006 Early Birds series. Peter and I arrived at about 9:30ish and went to register. We met with Alex and Adam, pinned on our own numbers (which didn't go so well), and then did the mentoring session, which was quite boring. They had us get into a double paceline and pull off by the front pair of riders both peeling off to the left and going to the back of the line, which was pretty dumb because it was causing the riders to overlap wheels (the rider from the left line would overlap the rider on the front of the right line pulling off to the left). They also had us riding over the Botts dots periodically, but when they got us into a single file line that went over every dot in the rode, I just started riding off to the side because it was uncomfortable and it couldn't have been too good for my wheels. This didn't make the mentors too happy, but they weren't the ones paying for fixing my bike.
The Junior 10-14's race was on a separate course which consisted of two straightaways of a couple hundred yards, and two hairpins. Going into the hairpin required just the right gear because everybody slowed way down around the corners but then sprinted coming out of them. Your gear would have to be low enough so that you could get up to speed quickly from the nearly dead stop but then you had to shift up without hesitation to maintain that speed. Eventually Peter started getting off ahead and I was staying with Alex and Adam. Sometimes there would be a group ahead of me so I would bridge up but coming out of the corners the positions got pretty shuffled and I would often lose my hard earned position so I stopped trying to bridge. The race was extremely intense and near the end this CVC kid apeared just ahead of me. In the last hairpin I got inside of him and caught up and then in the final sprint I stayed seated and got past him to beat him by about half a bike length. I had been trying to work with Alex but I was too tired to do much.
The race was about 25 minutes, and at the end I was quite exhausted. I liked the course because it was technical and challenging. But my teammates hated it.
Postscript: In retrospect I'm glad to have done that race, because I've had a recurrent chest-cold for much of the season -- so it was my only race in January and February.
|
