Race day. There’s nothing quite like waking up at 5:30 in the morning to get ready for a race that starts at 8:00 at night. Why wake up so early one might ask? You just never know with these guys, a common saying around the Jet Fuel -Norco bicycle training camp.

 My original plan was to sleep in as much as possible.  I wanted to be well rested, and keep myself out of kitchen where I’d be stuffing my face full of food. Eating is actually what cyclists spend most of their free time doing, a common misconception many people have. We actually only ride 400km a day because we like to eat so much food. If we didn’t ride, we would be permanently bed ridden, which actually wouldn’t be that bad because we would have more time to eat. Anyways, getting a little off topic… I awoke early Saturday morning so I could ride the “shoot-out” which is comparable to the Toronto Donut ride (if the Donut ride had taken multiple blood transfusions with a handful of other boosters for good measure). On any given “shoot-out”, it is common to see pro cyclists of all calibers. So why was I riding the “shoot-out” on a race day when most people would be taking it easy and tapering for the big race in the afternoon? Old Pueblo was only a level 2 NCC criterium, not a level 1.  The field was only mildly competitive with Joe blow teams such as, United Healthcare Pro Cycling, Jamis/Hagens Berman p/b Sutter Home, Team SmartStop-Mountain Khakis, Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies, Champion System Pro Cycling Team, Jelly Belly p/b Kenda , and Novo Nordisk.  Naturally, one would go for an early morning ride of 80km to freshen up the legs, to give these poor bastards a chance at the Twilight criterium.

Looks like those guys in blue where able to catch a ride to the race.

After the morning leisure ride, I arrived at our base camp, ate breakfast, and like every good cyclist does, went to bed. Again, sleep time is time away from the cyclists all time favourite hobby of creating wonderfully creative culinary dishes like tortilla wraps with bananas, Nutella, and peanut butter. Or mile high stacks of pancakes with gallons of the finest grade of high-fructose corn syrup, not to mention 10 lb bags of flour being solely used to create endless crepes. To the point the power goes out in the house and the fuses are blown from overuse of the oven, stove, electric mixers and the Holy Grail, the Magic Bullet.

Around 2:00pm the house was coming alive. Everyone was awake and the kitchen was bustling with people creating their pre-ride meals. We left the house at 6:00pm for the race, but not like regular people who drove to the race to keep their legs fresh. The Jet fuel-Norco bicycle team once again goes above and beyond. We like to ride to the race. 50km team time trial into a headwind of course, and a dash of rain for good measure. You just never know with these guys. It has been common practice riding to and from races, days totaling 230km. We like to give the other teams a fighting chance.

We finally arrive at our destination, Old Pueblo Twilight Criterium. The teams are already warming up on the course. We quickly got to the race sign-in, grabbed our race packages, pinned our numbers and hopped into the skirmish. Scouting the course finding the good lines on the circuit. Corner one had a strangely high curb preventing anyone from dive bombing on the inside. The back straight out of corner two was full of bumps and craters, borderline land mines. Corners three and four had strategically placed lights that were supposed to be there to light up the roads. Instead, they were aimed directly into our faces like flash bangs so that when we were finally on the main straight we were blinded and racing into total darkness.  For those that do not know what a criterium race is, it is a small circuit race usually composed of four corners on a 1 km loop. It is totally spectator friendly in the sense that people can walk around the entire circuit and view the race from all four corners. It’s like NASCAR, and boy do we love NASCAR. But what could you do to make this even more exciting? Naturally, have the event at night and turn it into a giant party. Nothing says party like a hundred men in spandex flying at 70kph at night.

At 8:00pm we were all lined up at the start; music blaring, crowds screaming, the commentator calling out some of the talent in the field. This went on for another 20 minutes; apparently the teams mentioned above were pretty good after all.  Suddenly all you heard was GO and hell broke loose.  I got to the line early to get good position, but it wasn’t much help. I couldn’t get my foot in the pedal quick enough and soon found myself in the back of the pack. This was nothing like the races I had done before. This was all out, full gas from the get go- no slowing down. Five minutes into the race the speeds were so fast that you could not even move up in positions. At least I couldn’t move up.  I saw some of those guys from the aforementioned teams moving around freely, as if there were coffee and donuts at the back of the race and they would periodically make an appearance to re-fuel and then get back to the front. This went on a while longer until BOOM! There was a crash, the worst thing that can happen.  Luckily I was not involved in it, but I was caught behind it. And to make matters worse, it was dark out and no one could see you. If you’re wondering how bad a crash can be compared to hard hitting sports like hockey or football, imagine jumping out of your car at 50kph wearing nothing but 1mm thin spandex. When a crash happens in a criterium you get something called a “free lap”. This lets all the riders who were in the crash or behind a chance to get back into the race. You get up, recollect yourself and mosey to start/finish area to hop back on the pain train, before it runs you over.  Remember, on a 1km course at speeds of over 50 km/h the group goes around very quickly. There are no time outs or benches.  If you’re lucky, you are able to continue to race. I was one of the fortunate ones to get that free lap with time to grab lungs-full, sip of my water and even a glance at computer to see the new all-time high heart rate spike of 195bpm. Then it was back in the carnage, sprinting for dear life, trying to merge onto that back group. This went on for a total of 3o minutes; moving up 5-15 spots only to be shot back to square one. Then, all of a sudden, on corner two I hit a bump which sprung my rear wheel airborne which happened to be hit by another rider, which pushed it straight into my wheel and caused it to be torn off my bike. That became the end of my first ever NCC  criterium. As for my team mates Anton and Travis, they managed to finish the race but as racing should have it, there are many variables; most of which are out of your control. They did not crash, but they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A rider had let go of a wheel which opened up a massive gap, splitting the field of 100 + riders into two, almost an even 50-50.  That’s how the night ended.

After the race we got our things together, talked about how things went, and headed home. Naturally, I would have ridden the 50km to base camp, but due to my bike being out of commission, I had gotten a lift home with Kevin Black, who happened to have a car rental for the weekend.  While things didn’t go as planned, it was, as expected, a humbling experience. To suffer is an invitation to learn and realize there is a lot of improvement to be made. It keeps me motivated to train harder so that one day I will be able to go to the back to get coffee and donuts and then fly back to the front.