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John Carr - Aecom kit, blue bike.
Here is a little report I wrote about my first time racing ever, which happened to be at the Fusion Games.
Rookie Racing – A first timers experience
Criterium Racing - This is a particular type of bicycle racing, in which a group of riders, cycle around and around a short circuit for no real reason as fast as they can for a set period of time, and then at the end ride around a handful of more times even faster than before to see who could cross the line first. Sounds simple right? So when I was asked to join my company's (AECOM) corporate criterium team for the Fusion Games, I thought to myself, how hard could it be?
In a word, very!
To be successful in a cycling race you need three things, skill, fitness and a bicycle. Meatloaf said 2 out of 3 aint bad, but unfortunately I only came to the table with the bicycle. 1 out of 3 is a fail on your typical exam.This wasn't looking good. However, through a stoke of luck (good or bad depending on which way you view it) I found myself winning a series of personal training sessions with the wonderful girls at Studio Rise fitness in Brisbane. Personal trainers are basically that little voice inside you that tells you to go harder, except personified with exceptional physiological knowledge and a worrying penchant for inflicting torture on their unsuspecting trainees! Thanks to Belinda, I went from awful, to not quite as awful as before in a short time frame. Now, it was race time.
The race day arrived and the team assembled consisting of a current crit racer, a triathlete, two others with legs the size of tree trunks, and some pasty Irish guy hauling up the rear (yours truly). The race got under way on a neutral lap of the circuit. Now I don't know about you, but neutral for me would mean, standing still, or maybe rolling under gravity, not hooking along at 30km/h+ whilst my spindly legs try to get warmed up. Then the bell rang signalling the race start, and the cadence went from faster than I was ready for, to "holy crap your feet are blurring".
As we circumvented the first few laps of the circuit something was becoming apparent to me, I don't like hot dogs. Previously I've loved these tasty conglomerates of bread, unspecified boiled meat and mustard. Therefore, how could a circuit named after these possibly be bad? Well, the big feature of the hot dog circuit is the hairpin bends at either end. Now whilst, I was rather good with the braking and turning if I do say so myself, I was not prepared for the accelerations after the turn.
Now I understand, that if you jump out of the saddle, you want a big gear and a few good blasts on the pedals. What I was subjected to was gears bigger than Mark Cavendish's trophy cabinet, and a similar amount of brutal accelerations to boot. It wouldn't take much to upset my rather tenuous position, and that’s what happened. In the braking for one corner, a chap to my right came out of his cleat, whilst a guy in front locked his gear. Confusion ensued and precious seconds were wasted, I rounded the corner and accelerated out. I'd lost a few metres to the tail of the group. No problem I thought, I can bridge this. Right?
Wrong.
Fresh air. We breath it every day, it is the giver of life, it is the sign of freshness, it was to be my worst nightmare. When you are in a group pedalling at a million miles an hour, you are shielded from the deadly "fresh air" and its associated resistance. But all on my lonesome, I had subjected myself to the fresh air, and in a combination of not being ready for it, and not reacting quick enough to my dilemma, I was about to experience the criterion racers worst nightmare, being dropped.
Like Floyd Landis's career, I went into freefall, and the group pulled away from me. For me it was disheartening, and for others it was too much, as some of my fellow droppee’s simply pulled out, knowing that efforts from now on were futile. I, being a first time racer, and altogether a little clueless kept battling on in order to finish the race and be classified. I could no longer offer my team any support, I could only trudge along in my own personal torture chamber as I watched my heart rate rocket, and the laps tick away.
No, I didn't get involved in a fabulous lead out train, no, I didn’t get to experience the tactics and alliances of the group, but I did race, I did finish and by god, I wasn't last!
It's been an incredible experience. As I sit here licking my wounds, and brooding at my rookie errors, I can't help but feel I've caught the racing bug, and I'll be back next year to take on the "hot dog of hell" once again.
John Carr
Half racer, Half reporter, Half not good at fractions
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