A few pretty low key couple of crits this weekend up in the city of Phoenix. First was the San Tan Criterium. Since the San Dimas Race was drawing a lot of the big guns from Arizona these crits were pretty small. Saturday’s was a pretty fun course, 8 corners but super wide so not all that technical. I attacked a few laps in for a prime, I got a pretty good gap and kept thing rolling in sudo-recovery mode. The breakaway came up to me and I tagged on to the back. The group wasn’t working well together due to the large size, but after a few attacks and a few shed riders our 6 man group started working well together. It was pretty boring till the end after that. I positioned myself a little poorly in the final corner and ended up 3rd.

Sunday’s course was a little more suited to AZ crit racing style: a big oval with only two corners over a km. It was wide open and fast, which meant nothing got away the entire race. Fortunately the racing was still pretty aggressive. The race eased up in the last 15 minutes which gave everyone a chance to catch their breath and start the swarming conveyor belt (sprint up the side to just behind whatever the leadout is, sit up to recover, drift back in the pack as more people swarm in-front of you…repeat). In one of the swarms I got a rear derailleur through my front wheel with 4 laps to go. I thought I had broke a spoke and was a little sketched out to do anything in the sprint.

Turns out that crit sprinting skills are something that can get rusty, I definitely need to work on my positioning skills before heading back east for serious crit racing.

-Chris Uberti