Race Report: 2024 Fremont Bank Crit - Men’s Pro/1/2

Race: 2024 Fremont Bank Crit - Men’s Pro/1/2

Date: September 23, 2024

AVRT racers: Jon Wells

Top Result: Jon Wells, 6th of 31

Course: 1 km square in Livermore. Its a 4 corner office park crit with almost no elevation gain (finish is maybe 1% grade) that can be exposed to the wind. The same course was used for the earlybird crits back at the beginning of the season and the Shea Center crit about a month ago

Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/12480206106 

Nutrition: a pre race Redbull and 60g flow bottle during the race

Race Recap:

I thought I was already done with my road season but after seeing the soft prereg numbers for this race, I decided to sign up for one last crit for the season as a last ditch effort at scoring a few more upgrade points. There ended up being about 30 guys in the race without any big teams present. Terun had the biggest squad with 3 guys and strong individuals included Trevor from Enjoy. My plan was to race aggressively for a breakaway with all the big teams missing, thinking it would play out similar to the 4th of July crit.

Race started pretty aggressively from the whole field with lots of attacks getting sent and immediate bridging. I wanted to be in a move with Terun and Trevor, but it quickly became apparent that everyone wanted to be in a move with Trevor as he had several shadows wherever he moved in the pack. After being in a couple of small groups that got brought back, I made it into a move with Matt from Terun plus a couple others, but notably no Trevor. We committed and fell into rotation almost immediately as a few more guys bridged across the rapidly expanding gap until we had a group of 8. This would end up being the selection for the day (~15 min into the race), without Trevor and everyone racing alone without a teammate in the move.

I thought 8 guys might be too big of a move to work well together, but everyone fell into rotation without any skipping pulls and really committed to the move. The only exception was a team swift junior who felt the need to attack the group solo (happened twice) who we let blow all of his watts while he dangled by himself just off the front of our group both times. After his second hopeless try, he fell back into the rotation and ended up being a nonfactor in the rest of the race. 

Around the 45 minute mark, our gap ballooned out from ~25 seconds to 45 seconds in only a couple laps, indicating the field had given up. Just as the field came into view in front of us, the officials decided to pull the field before we could lap them, which is sort of weird. Usually the field is left in during a crit but maybe since our group sizes were similar they decided to pull? Either way, with now only our group of 8 left on the course, the pace dropped rapidly. People started playing games with skipping pulls and letting wheels go since we could no longer be caught by the field.

I decided I wanted to field sprint once the field had been pulled. I think going early was my chance to win the race but I wanted guaranteed upgrade points so going for a hero move to win posed the risk of rolling in last in the group and getting nothing. Everyone else apparently made up their mind for sprinting as well. There was one effort from a masters racer 2 laps to go that we very quickly shut down as a group. The finale came down to our whole group sprinting together from maybe 250 meters to go. I came into the last corner in 5th but had to brake slightly as I was coming into the wheel in front of me too quickly at the apex. This slight braking cost me enough momentum to make my sprint pretty worthless (despite being one of my highest max powers ever in a race) … remember, speed >> watts in races!! Ended up in 6th place on the day, taking home 2 more upgrade points and also a $2 dollar bill worth of prize money.

-Jon