Tulsa Tough — Day 1

Racing a criterium is one of the most exciting, complex, and challenging thing you can do as a bike racer. The nuances of pack position, energy conservation, and all of the other factors of a bike race play out in a field of sometimes over a hundred riders on a course about a mile long–usually with at least four corners. 

All that said, writing about a criterium doesn’t really do it justice.

If I told you that I “moved up”, it doesn’t convey the chaos that is involved with that action. It gives no sense of the pain in your legs as you you accelerate up the inside of a corner. “Moved up” doesn’t tell you how tense the moments are as you speculate/hope/pray that the riders you’re passing will realize you’re coming before they start their turn, and leave you enough space to get through–instead of cutting the corner and putting you into the curb/barrier/storm-grate/crowd/hospital.

Telling you that I “sprinted” doesn’t come any where near conveying the night and day contrast of hiding, hiding, hiding behind your leadout, saving as much energy as you can for the entire duration of the race so that when you hit your mark–that point on the course where you tell yourself to go–you can put absolutely everything you have into the pedals, so you can push as hard and fast as you can, so you can feel the competition start to inch up on either side, and so you can, knowing you’re almost there, push a little bit harder.

Bike racing is an exercise in tempting fate, in pitting your best efforts and preparations against raw statistical chaos. Criteriums condense and concentrate that chaos to its most distilled form. I can’t tell you in words the rate and intensity at which these races unfold. If you want to know what it’s like, strip down to your underwear, take a shot of tequilla, and go run as hard and fast as you can down the yellow line of the busiest street in your town. You get added points if you can get one hundred of your closest friends to come with you. You get more added points if there’s $1,000 on the line for the winner.

That is crit racing, and that is why I went to Tulsa, OK.

Day 1 – Blue Dome

Course Description: 8 corner, ~1 mile with a minor climb on the back half.

Weather: 85 degrees and dry–to start.

The Blue Dome crit started like any other, a series of attacks, surges, and primes, that keep things on the wrong side of comfortable until the pack settles in to a more steady pace.

I maintained decent position, and tried to stay conserve as much energy as possible. Somewhere near the half-way point of the race a few riders attacked, weren’t followed, and established the break of the day. The race continued in “calm” fashion until the lap cards showed ten to go. The break was still up the road, and the storm clouds that had been threatening downtown Tulsa had started to scatter random drops–not quite raining yet–onto the tarmac.

When we came around on the next lap, the lap cards showed five to go. For whatever reason, the race organizers decided to shorten the race–possibly to try and dodge the impending storm and keep the race safe. They accomplished neither.

With the break still away, and the remainder of the race cut in half, the field went nuts. People started attacking, trying to gain position, trying to maintain position, and trying to both reel in the two riders up the road and save enough gas for the sprint.

I was somewhere in the top twenty, a little too far back for my taste, when we came into the bell lap. Saying that it started to rain is an understatement. Tulsa was underwater.

The first few minutes of a rainstorm are the most dangerous. All of the the various auto-related fluids (oil, fuel, anti-freeze, spilled double-bahkti-chai-skim-lattes) that have settled into the nooks and crannies of the tarmac are dislodged by the rain and come straight to the surface. Twenty minutes into the rainstorm and this slurry is washed clear. Twenty seconds into a rainstorm it sits on the road and makes it very, very difficult to keep a bike upright–especially when you’re trying to navigate an eight-corner parcourse at 30 miles and hour.

And so it was, that as we made the left-hander that was turn two, the front half-a-dozen riders of the main field ended up on the ground. I, by the freak probablitiy that governs bike races–made it through the carnage, and tried to balance the pace needed to catch the lone rider up the road, with the caution needed to stay upright. The other nine riders that had managed to miss the crash did the same. It rained harder.

I came through the last corner as fast as I dared, and sprinted. I couldn’t see through the rain. The solo-rider stayed away. I got 11th.

Tulsa Tough 2011 Day 2 Race Report

Tulsa Tough 2011 Day 3 Race Report