Unlike Baby Tate, I am not a Crit lover. Yet I still go out and keep trying to get a result at Crit races. I have learnt a few lessons over the last two years that I thought I would share with you all.
10. Don't break into the corners, no one else does, and they mostly stay upright, so surely my bike will also stay upright too?
9. Don't get caught behind a crash - you will never get back on again - even if the crash is in the supposedly neutralised lap (Stoke on Trent 2012). I reckon that you're better off coming down, taking a lap out and getting put back into the race in your intended position.
8. Don't go into a race without knowing the rules about laps out due to mechanicals or crashes. Apparently in the Tour Series, if you have a crash on the formation lap, you can just wait until the race comes round again and join back in. Ed Clancy did this in Aberystwyth this year, and we could have all done it in Stoke on Trent last year if only we had known.
7. Don't ride into the footing of one of the barriers. Now this is not something I have done myself, but have seen it done once (in Stoke on Trent last year on formation lap) and heard it done once (in Perth). It can result in broken bones.
6. Don't fire off the front chasing a prime unless you know you have the legs to stay on when the pack comes back through half a lap later. I remember doing this in a Cat 4 Mens race (my first ever race) simply because I was annoyed that a guy had completely cut me up into the previous corner. Schoolgirl error!!!
5. Don't try to ride a Crit race on anyone else's bike but your own. I certainly would not recommend a 14 year old boys bike (with a boy's saddle) with SRAM gears when you are used to Shimano. Unsurprisingly I duly got dropped, and it was all a rather uncomfortable experience (Jersey 2013)
4. Don't race with a wheel that is prone to dropping out of your frame. Now I didn't know this was going to happen at the Nocturne - it never has before, but right enough, after several bumpy laps, my rear wheel did indeed drop out of the drops, completely jamming up my cranks and gears and duly depositing me on the ground going round the tightest corner on the circuit. Ouch! (I believe this is still my only crash in a Crit race)
3. Don't fumble the clip-in off the start line, whatever you do! And if you do, only do it once. I had my worst epic fail at this particular Crit Art at the Nocturne this year where I went from a decent mid-pack position to the very back by failing to clip in not once, not twice but three times in close succession. Race over!
2. Don't try to carry too much stuff from your car to the staging / warm up area, particularly whilst riding your bike over speed bumps. In Jersey, my track pump was laid across my handlebars, and bounced off going over a speedbump. Somehow this fatally wounded my bike by breaking the fork. Hence no.5. (In hindsight, we think the fork had already been broken in a crash 3 weeks earlier, and was just waiting to fracture right through).
1. Whatever you do, don't start a Crit race with your brakes jammed on. At Chichester, whatever I did I just could not hold anyone's wheel, and girl after girl just rode away from me - even the Cat 4's!!! Thinking it was my legs still playing up, I fought on for too long, and didn't realise until about 10mins after the race had finished that my back wheel would not spin at all. What a spanner!
Iona at Peterborough Crit
