OBRA road Crit and Hillclimb Championships

I will preface this very short post with this: I have never raced either of these events before because I thought it would be a drag… and guess what? IT WAS!!!

I have done a few criteriums (riding in circles) before but always as part of a stage race. Under these conditions crits are generally just a waste of time and you just ride around and get a time so I thought the Championships would be harder and therefore better. Wrong.

Heres the deal, road dudes are pretty rad when you are talking continental teams and protour. However, around here they are basically a bunch of strong pedalers–not much else going on. This was evidenced by the ridiculous sprinting and subsequently ludicrous braking out of and into every turn. After a few laps of this I was near the back wonder how I would ever make it to the front with such an energy waste going on.

Then it got better–a bunch of them started wiping out due to the silly brake checking and their hypoxic mental condition and I was split off the back. Enough–time to have some dinner and relax!

The Hillclimb wasn’t a lot better. I got greedy and decided to do the masters race first which essentially only caused me to get bored and do crappy. I finished a couple seconds off winning and then proceed to totally blow off the CAT 1 race and wasn’t even in the top five. My performance was so lame it isn’t really even worth mentioning but the point is… The Hillclimb took less than a half hour and wasn’t every more much more than a five percent grade.

So, really it was a prologue TT with a net elevation gain. Not my gig!