Santa Cruz Crit Report-by Mark Foster

Race: Santa Cruz Crit
Race Date: 4-17-11
Class: Masters 35+ Cat4 (Mark Foster/Devon Joos)

So I meet Devon Joos at the park and ride on Pagemill and 280 at 7:15am Sunday morning and we bomb down to Santa Cruz to go have some fun. He was supposed to get his Cat 3 upgrade for the weekend, but Larry Nolan never got back to him, so unfortunately he was riding in my class. I’m kidding of course, it’s always nice to have a team mate to ride with; but Devon can put out so much power, that beating him to the finish line would require some sort of divine intervention.

I think there were about 50 racers in our class. I was told by a reliable source to ride Santa Cruz more like a motorcycle race than a bicycle race. By that he meant get a good start, stay at the front. I don’t think he meant ride it like an AMA superbike race. Which means try to get the “wholeshot”, lead as much as you can and if you have a wheel on somebody, it’s your line, chop him.

So as I go to line up, the Penn Velo group had around eight guys on the front row. I go along the sidewalk and then drop into a ten inch gap between the curb on the right and the now irritated rider on my left. He asks me, “would you mind if I went ahead when the whistle blows since there’s not room for both of us”…”no problem”. After all, I was the one poaching his space. The whistle blows and he clips in and gets rolling just before me as we agreed. I hammer and get a great start. I was third into the downhill hairball hairpin turn. I was told by one of our experienced teammates to stay in the drops when ever it gets crowded so you don’t get your bars taken out. So that’s what I did pretty much the whole race…stayed in the drops. I wondered where Devon was? He came by toward the end of the first lap and the two of us stayed in the top five to eight positions the entire race. Up the hill one time I had a guy yell at me when I moved over and stole the wheel he wanted to follow. Devon pulls up next to me and says laughingly,”They’re yelling at you”. I respond, “Whatever”. The race goes on and is a ton of fun bombing around these tight turns with a 300 yard hill in between. Some guy gets all squirly and does a tank slapper(motorcycle racing term) and almost takes out Devon, but saves it. With two or three laps to go I hear a terrible sounding crash behind me…bummer. With one lap to go the pace picks up dramatically up the hill and I briefly fall back to about tenth or so but hammer on Devon’s rear wheel and we’re comfortably in the top few going into the hairpin. This was fun! I don’t really know or understand the etiquette of bicycle criterium racing; but I certainly didn’t want to take anyone out. Nor did I want to get taken out. As we came up to the corners, I was concerned about getting stuffed(again, a motorcycle racing term meaning to get passed on the inside). So although I left a foot or so on the inside, I took more of an inside line than Devon and the guys he was following; effectively closing any chance of passing with out causing a crash. There was one more area right next to a bush covered wall, right before the final corner on to the straight; where there had been a bunch of passing throughout the race. I pulled to the right out of the draft, but cutting off any aggressive attempts to pass coming into the last corner. Again somebody yelled at me, but last I checked, we were racing. We came around the last corner and I held Devon’s wheel as I saw more than a few people around me powering up the climb for the last time. At this point it is all a blur. About halfway up the hill there was only Devon, one other dude named Ricky Lucero, and me. As we crested the hill I think Ricky was on my left. Devon started to gap me and Ricky got his wheel. Oops, now he’s leading out a very fit strong dude instead of me. And worse than that, a guy is starting to pass me on the right. Now I’m digging as deep as I can. The hill is flattening out, Devon and Ricky are side by side; the guy on my right is about half past me. I’m continuing to upshift and with twenty yards to go the guy on my right lets out a thunderous scream and gives up. I finish third. I couldn’t tell who won, but it ended up that Ricky beat Devon by a tire. Good result for Coretechs, although Devon a bit disappointed, I was happy. -Mark