Oak Bay Crit

[watwin]

Fun new experience racing in a criterium today, the atmosphere was perfect thanks to ideal weather, a great crowd, a PA system keeping that crowd entertained and an actual motorbike preceding the racing!! B race, 40 minutes plus 2 laps, went out quickly and, hyped up after watching the C race, I fumbled trying to clip in my left pedal to start with, leading to me looking decided not pro attempting to clip in and pedal at the same time up to the first corner!

The fast start meant I had to use a fair bit of energy to catch the back of the group again (with Geoff, who I think had the same issue) once I clipped, so despite Peter’s sage advice to stay near the front of the pack to avoid the bigger gaps forming near the back, I had a hard time moving up and was frequently the last guy into the corners. As the pace came down after the first 5-10 minutes I tried moving up the side (lots of guys moving up inside and outside the line as the pace often slowed down considerably, making the corners a bit messy) and slowly inserted myself further and further up the group. Calming down a bit allowed me to remember Lister’s practice sessions and pedal into the corners, the addition of which allowed me to stay in my seat after corners and made the pace pretty manageable.

Throughout the middle of the race both Roland and Adam made several valiant attempts at attacking, only to be dragged back within half a lap. At the time I thought several attacks were oddly timed and were abandoned rather easily, only to find out after the race that the girl ‘cheering us on’ with a cowbell was actually indicating prize laps I didn’t realize existed….ooops. Good on Adam for grabbing two of these (did you get any Roland?)!!

A couple tire skips on the bumps/ruts in the corners later we were coming into the last 3 laps or so and I began a concerted effort to move up the group and start the simple endgame I had devised: find Adam’s wheel for the last lap and hope his attacks had tired him out. Managed it with a full lap to go and hold it into the final bend. I made to swing out from behind Adam and forgot the other advice on sprinting Lister had given: moving to a heavier gear before standing. I started to spin out, then my efforts to compensate with cadence caused my right foot to unclip (a fatal combination of poor technique and mountain bike cleats). I fishtailed for a pedal stroke or two, clipped in, got into Adam’s slipstream again and moved beside him, but couldn’t make it past before the finish. Sigh…I’ll get you yet Adam!!!!

Overall I had an absolute blast with the whole experience, racing and watching the A and C races (great job everybody in those too). I think a woman from Oak Bay in the B race summarized it best when we were cooling down after the finish: “You guys have an awesome club…”

PS: anybody know if photos are going to be posted for the race??? Don't see them up yet...

[Paul C.]

Great day in the C race. 13 started, so it was a good field....but how about those Triple Shot ringers doing their first Bike Race ever...Kevin and Rolf. No crashes or even near misses from my observation. and if I counted right in the B and C groups combined 16 OUT OF 30 Were TRIPLE SHOTERS!!! Lots of fun and a good group effort. And I never thought I would do a Crit. When is the next one?? Thanks again to Roland who's keeping us all looking sharp and feeling like a pro bike club! [Although my 18 year old neice says she will never be seen in public with me wearing my new jersey and hat.] cheers Paul Christopher

[Roland]

Fun race today. I decided to race B, as I haven't finished an A race with the pack yet this year. A full day of downhill yesterday to get the legs ready. Even though there isn't much pedaling, it's still took a bit of the jump out of my legs. I was busy handing out gear so I didn't get much of a warmup, just one lap.

I don't like races that are a group ride with a sprint at the end. My style is to attack early and often. The more pointless the attack, the more likely I am to take it. I think I attacked first on lap 2, and then at least once every two laps after that. Nothing stuck.

I flatted on lap 19 of 29 with a cut in my side wall. I detoured through the park and Dave Spiers had a wheel ready for me. Quick change and I was back in the race.

With about 5 to go I was on the front when the bell rang for a prime, so I stayed on the front to lead it out, but nobody was attacking, so I went for it. Gillian challenged me, but I managed to take the prime by a few inches. After the prime, I stayed on the front, kept the pace high until the sprint developed and left me in the dust. Pretty much a perfect race.

Unfortunately, Duane wasn't there with his camera, so no high quality photos like we are used to. Hopefully somebody else was there with their camera.

The C race was nice to see, hopefully it happens again. Everybody I talked to afterwards had a very positive experience. (That is unusual for most people's first road race) Carly said she couldn't believe how soon it was over. I think Tripleshot should look at hosting a crit next year and make the C race a regular part of it. (Western Speedway, Mall parking lot, Rock Bay perhaps?)

The A race looked really fast. I'm glad I had no part of that.

The B field was over half tripeshot. I think when that happens, half the tripleshotters should turn their jerseys inside out and then work against each other.

We should be sure to thank OBB for putting on the C race. (And for putting on the race in general)

Good times were had by all.

Stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/41826417

[wonger]

I wasn’t sure there was much that could top the buzz of acquiring a new 15-pound bike with all the bells and whistles, but it turns out entering your first race and watching Tripleshot go 1-2-3-4 tops it. Man, I’m still floating around after this morning.

The race was pretty much as predicted by Lister and Peter – spend some time getting to know who to follow and who not to, hold your line through the corners, try not to get accordioned too much – all pretty much what I expected. The pace seemed harder at the start, probably due to the fact that I took some time to clip in and started playing catch up right off the bat. It took a few laps for me to figure out that I’d be happier a bit closer to the front and it seemed pretty easy to get there.

There were a couple hard accelerations during the race, but we all stayed patient and it all came back together. On the last lap I thought the bell was another preim (sp?) until the pace started to pick up and everyone’s elbows got higher. I was trying to find Alec or Adam to latch onto, but they were both a bit too far ahead so I grabbed John’s (go Team Damocles!) wheel and did all I could to get to the line as fast as possible. Turns out I got fourth. I’m pretty happy with that.

I thought our race was really positive, everyone holding their line and letting you know if they were inside or out. All in all a really fun day. Oh ya, if anyone is wondering if upgrading your bike has a positive impact on your performance, my answer is an unequivocal yes. If it worked for me, think of what Lister could do on a carbon fiber bike!

Things I’d do differently: Look at the lap sign more, try to ride closer to the front, know when the bell lap is and move up sooner.


It’s been almost exactly a year of riding with Tripleshot and I finally got into a race and had a great time. Should be fun to try it again.

Stats: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/41840488

[jeremy]

Tree-1, Jeremy-0

Well my day didn't go as great as everyone else's, I raced in the C race, after looking at the field my goal was to be in the top five. So the race started and I was feeling pretty good, up with the top 6 bunch and having no problem with the pace that we were setting, then on lap 2 or 3 I took corner two just a touch to aggressive. I did the exact opposite of what Lister told me to do, I took the corner tight and then went wide out of it, I was doing about 30kph and thinking "I can make this, I can make this" putting all my weight on my outside pedal and not really braking, If I would have had 3or4 more inches I would have been fine, but I didn't so I tried to bunnyhopp onto the sidewalk and must have slightly clipped my front tire and then I was down on sliding, fortunately I missed most of the side walk and did most of my sliding on the wet grass. While sliding on my side on the wet grass I see this tree coming up quick, and all I could think was "oh crap this is gonna hurt" I slid into the tree on my side so I took it right in the ribs, legs on one side of the tree and arms and head on the other. This had me seeing lots of pretty pretty stars and left me very winded, but of corse the first words out of my mouth were"is my bike ok?' then after seeing that my bike was fine, my next concern was "did I rip my new kit?" after seeing that my new kit was ok, I could worry about the fact that I couldn't breathe. A BIG thanks to Steve Lunde and two other guys (OBB guys whose names I don't know) who were helping me out right after I went down.
So after all this I was told I could take a lap and jump back in, so since I wasn't bleeding (on the outside anyway) I jumped back in. I rode for about 5 more laps and noticed that I couldn't take in a full breathe without pain, so I decided throw in the towel, but I noticed Brian E was just falling off the front group so I thought before I quit I'd be a good teammate, So I told him to hop on my wheel and I gave it all I could to get him back to the pack, then I dropped off and stopped.
I would also like to give another big thanks to the OBB guys for going over my entire bike after the crash, except for a little scrape of one of the hoods my bike is running great.

The rest of the races were a blast to watch, awesome showing by all the Easter eggs.
Some of my fav. highlights, Josh and Carly kicking some serious butt, Dave Spiers being Roland's own personal pitt crew, And all the funny comments being tossed Peters way durring the A race.

Hopefully I'll be out this week, but I've gotten pretty sore in the last couple of hours so tuesday might be a writeoff for me.

Keep the rubber side down boys and girls

[Stéphane Tran]

Well done everyone! It was great to see such a great Tripleshot turnout today. Here are some pics of the B race.

[Stéphane Tran]

Some more pics:

[Ian]

I have to be honest, I have mixed feelings about today's race.

I personally had a pretty decent race. Thanks to Lister's coaching, had a BLAST in the corners and felt like I could pretty much take them where and how I wanted to take them. Despite bouncing through that one pothole on the second corner after the start/finish line several times. This was also the first race I was able to figure out how take a decent pull without cooking myself. I ended up out front for one full lap (during which I tried to push it a bit) and then was able hop back into the pack without getting dropped. My only real mistake during the race was completely blowing the last 90* corner on the last lap. The group was carrying far more speed into that corner than we had until that point, I was too far inside and couldn't move out any further, and so I had to scrub too much speed going in. By the time I came out and got on the gas again, the group was pretty much gone. I'm even more choked about this because I was beside JohnT at the time and therefore have spent most of the afternoon going, "What if...?"

Here's my point of contention. Just like at the last Caleb Pike, I feel like this was race was, to use Roland's words "a group ride with a sprint at the end". Whereas both the C and the A races broke up a little bit, we once again just stayed in a nice, tight little pack with the occasional surge thrown in. As has been said before, there were a few attacks off the front, but none of them stuck. For the Bs for Caleb this week, I propose we get a little more organized. It was great to see Roland and Adam (and others too, sorry if I missed you!) attacking off the front, but since almost 2/3 of that race was TS, we should have been able to make something of that. Apparently even the announcer's commented that if we'd been organized we could have set up a paceline and broken things up a bit. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I will be the first to admit that I'm still kinda new at this...

Lastly, congrats to all the first time racers today in all categories! You guys rocked it.

[JohnT]

The race went well for me. After two weeks off I wasn't sure how my legs would feel, so I played a pretty passive role. Happy to plan some strategy for Wednesday Ian, but today the plan was just to go with the flow - for me at least. Roland did most of the damage to our competition. Adam and I let him go on a couple of occasions, but each time someone ran around us .... then we gave chase. Adam was also aggressive and, as Ian pointed out, there were other leaders, just no serious attacks.

All seem to agree that cornering discussions and practice have made a difference. I found I could pedal through all of the corners on most laps. This meant post-corner sprinting was rare.

I also agree that everyone behaved well during the race. Usually we ran through corners one at a time, but when we were three-wide, someone often reminded the group to hold lines and they/we did.

A pace line would have been fun, never thought of it during he race. However, the results were very good as is - TripleShot 1->10 would have been embarrassing. We should all thank Oak Bay Bikes when we're in there. It's great to have an event in town. Andrew and Clare really enjoyed their races. Andrew (7 yrs) raced in the 8-12 group just so he could do a full lap.

The A race was exciting to watch. Well done you guys - I haven't heard the details, but it seemed that there were a few problems that at least Josh and Gavin had to overcome. Did you guys go down? Great recovery.

JT

[bikehart]

Great Race today...

On the CTV national news tonight there is a little coverage of today's event mixed in with a piece on Ryder Hesjedal.
http://watch.ctv.ca/news/news/top-picks ... clip328827

[Rolf]

Fun first crit for me. Heck, first race cuz the Sooke FreezeFest in May was more like the touring I hope to do when I'm retired.

What a well-organized, super event. My kids had a really positive experience in their respective rides and Oak Bay Bikes may just have earned themselves a loyal customer in the process.

My only goals for today's C race were: (a) to stay upright throughout the race and avoid testing the limitations of my short- or long-term disability insurance, and (b) to stay near the front at all times to realize goal (a).

I woke up surprisingly nervous (see goal (a)) and was happy to do a nice spin to Starbucks for some breakfast followed by a spin along the water to Windsor. The gorgeous morning view of Trial Island settled my nerves a bit. After checking in, I rode steady laps for another 20 minutes or so, keeping things warm. I only tried a few little accelerations during warm-up, just to make sure everything felt tight on the bike. But in retrospect, I think I may have expended too much energy warming up.

The C race started well, with everyone strung out in a line pretty quick. In fact, I don't recall doing many corners side-by-side with other riders at any time during the race, to my relief. I kept to my goal of being anywhere in the front 5 and felt good enough to pull a few times on the first couple laps. Just as things were settling a bit after few laps, the Josh/Carly missile came cruising past on the back straight, gapping everybody. It was awesomely timed, as the front bunch of guys all went nuts trying to make sure we caught the ride.

At some point in the first five laps I was doing corner 2 at Newport and Currie (coincidentally where Jeremy ended up hugging a tree) and I came through a bit hot behind Kevin. Nerves may have contributed, but I briefly locked up my back wheel and slid out what felt like a foot, but may have been less. Apologies to whoever was following; hope you had a change of shorts. And thanks for the well-deserved trashtalk.

I was happy the race was measured by 30 min. + 2 laps because it allowed me to glance down at my trip timer at any time and see how far we had to go. So after a while of trading pulls with Josh/Carly, Eric S., Kevin F., and two non-Tripleshotters, I thought "Phew, I'm getting fat-eeg-ed", looked down and saw that only 12 minutes had passed! I was still keeping up but started to wonder just how long I'd last. I tried to keep my pulls short and then started to drop to the back every time I hit third position. The non-Tripleshotters exchanged some snarky remarks about my refusal to pull through; I felt like cracking them on the head with a Kryptonite lock. A lap or two after this, the four of them dropped me (I think Kevin had dropped a short time before). I think this was about 20 minutes in.

I then had a handful of miserable laps of just me and the wind. I tried to get as small as I could and draw on the awesome support I was getting along Windsor (both TS-ers and my fabulous girlies!), but I felt my speed gradually slipping. Then along came Kevin with a kind word and a faster wheel. It's such a relief to draft after pulling alone for a while. I sucked his wheel a full 2 or 3 laps before I felt like I could actually help out. I apologized to Kevin, saying I'd pull him to the sprint in return. By this time the 30 minutes was up and I tried to give him the best launch I could on the final lap.

After the race, as I was basking in the admiration of a couple of pre-schoolers, I heard them say over the PA I'd come ninth! This just sounded wrong, so I spent some time going between the dude with the finishing list and various riders trying to figure it out. I think Kevin and I must have been catching up over the last few laps or something because the dude flat-out refused to believe we hadn't been lapped. In fact, before Kevin came over to corroborate, I started to wonder if we had been lapped and I just didn't notice in my race-induced tunnel vision. Well, they figured it out in the end -- I'm damn happy with 6th place and I think I'm ready to race B!

Actually, I'm most happy with making goal (a).

Congrats to everyone else who had a good ride today and big thanks to everyone who supported today's efforts.

[Josh.E]

Yeah, about halfway through the A race, Gavin and I were up near the front of the pack on corner 3 when a rider went down in front of me. Evasive action, ended up bunny hopping the curb, and skidding to a stop on the lawn, with Gavin right behind me . I jumped back in, now about 50 meters behind the pack and thought I could catch back on. I spent 5 laps by myself full gas trying, before finally stopping and asking if I could take a neutral lap. Obviously should have asked for it right after the crash. I waited for the group to come around again and jumped on the back.
I had been feeling really comfortable in the group before the crash. Now after those 5 laps I was cooked. It took about 3 or so laps of yo-yoing at the back before I finally started feeling recovered enough to start moving up through the field again..
That was about it though. When the sprint started, I just didn't have enough left.

The highlight of my day, though, was piloting the tandem in the C race. Carly is awesome on that thing, you lean into a corner, she does the same. Once you get up to speed.....freight train. We lead out the last lap and a half, and ended up coming in 2nd.

[EricS]

Yes...a big thanks to the Josh/Carly freight train. I raced for my first time in the C race, and it was fast.

Rolf and I had discussed the race during our warm up and we agreed it would be best to stay near the front if we could. I was able to stay in the front 5 for the whole race. I think I may have spent a bit more time at the front than I should have because I was bagged by about 25 minutes in.

When the tandem blew by us all, I was unable to stay with them. The two dudes from the mainland went for it and caught up to Josh and Carly. I was on my own in forth for a while struggling to catch up, but it was just too difficult. Then a beautiful thing happened, the tandem slowed. I could see Josh shoulder checking to see if I was still alive. I pushed a bit harder and got on their wheel. I was able to recover behind the CoMotion Missle for a whole lap, then I went ahead and led them for a lap. By this time we had caught back up to, and passed the two non-TSers. While this show of team support was the highlight of my race, it also signified the end of my glycogen. It suddenly felt like I was dragging a burlap sack full of phone books behind me. During the last half of the last lap, I dropped back to third, then to forth by the finish line.

All in all, a great first race experience made all the better by the support of a great team. From Lister's coaching, Peter's tips and encouraging words, Roland's work with the kits to the TS teamwork during the race, it was great.

Thank you all.

[Josh.E]

Peter:
http://twitpic.com/breqp

[Plawless]

you know that photo is from 2009, right?

[Josh.E]

I do now

[jeremy]

Cool Video by the the nice folks @ OBB
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=516906581243

[Brian @ OBB]

Cool Video by the the nice folks @ OBB
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=516906581243

Thanks for posting the video Jeremy, and thanks for all the kind words everyone. I just signed up on the forum to spam the video out, since you guys are all over it, but I'm happy to have been beaten to it.

See y'all next year!

[Brian @ OBB]

PS. here's the Facebook version if you're the kind of person that tags themselves in everything:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=516906581243