Sun Devil Criterium Race Report (Buzz)

by Buzz Wright

Masters 35+ Cat 4/5

​I've been able to somewhat regain my aerobic endurance the past few weeks but my legs are still pretty weak and I have no jump right now. No jump at all. No sprint either. No power, no speed, no acceleration. It will come back after I get some solid interval training in, but for these races I had little hope of avoiding being pulled again. My hope was to hang with the group as long as possible and I really wanted to see Jimmy gain confidence in crits. The plan was to stay near the front to minimize the surging and have Jimmy stay on my wheel. If I were able to hang on for the finish I would do what I could to give him a leadout for the sprint.

As it turned out, I was able to stay with the group for the entire race which was a nice surprise. With a couple laps to go I made sure Jimmy was on my wheel and worked as hard as I could to keep us in the top 5. I knew we needed to move up to the front on the bell lap but I just didn't have the power to get up there and we remained in 5th place going into the final corner. Out of the corner I tried to give Jimmy a leadout but I had nothing to give. My "sprint" was horrendous, only taking me from 27.7 mph to 30.6 but it was good enough to hold my spot (5th).

Cat 4/5

​My legs were done after the first race. The plan for the second one was just to hold on for as long as possible. The field was pretty big, resulted in a lot of surging which just annihilated whatever remaining strength I had in my legs. Lap after lap I lost positions until eventually I fell off the main group, resigning to riding out the remaining time in a smaller chase group. The chase group was never organized enough to avoid being pulled and after a few more laps that's what happened. It was frustrating to be pulled from a race after 20 minutes but it meant I could watch and cheer for Jimmy.

Photo by Nick Wilson