Catching Up: Ontario Crit

Last Sunday, we had the tough task of trying to repeat our performance from the day before. The World Championships of Industrial Park Crits, as Erik called it, was all that he described it is: fast, aggressive, hot.

The field grew a fair bit from the day before up to about 120, the field quality increased, the temperature crept upward into the 90s, and we had us a bike race.

We decided to be slightly more conservative, which manifested itself in us being a little lackadaisical to start with, and under-represented early on, leaving poor Adam to patch the holes and get across to moves that we should have been in.

After the slow start, and right about the 30 minute mark, we got going, and the under-representation was not an issue anymore. At all points after that we were active and accounted for, and doing or damndest to make a break work.

Unfortunately, the race was crazy fast (average speed near the 30mph mark), and sitting in was amazingly easy, whilst riding off the front was the complete opposite: hard.

The race came down to a field sprint and we did our best to get things sorted out to make a good leadout. The leadout didn't quite go as planned, and we unraveled a bit around one to go, but in the end, the team had three in the top 10 with Adam 6th, Barlevav 7th, and Guttenplan 10th.

Karl Menzies won, followed by a soon to be relegated Hilton Clarke, Rahsaan Bahati, and Kayle Leogrande. It was an A-Caliber sprint for sure.

The leadout should only get better from here, and I get a little giddy thinking what that'll be like when we get everything rolling just right.



The race was 90 minutes