A CRASH and a WIN - 2020 Cherry Pie Criterium P/1/2

hey guys welcome back we are at the Cherry Pie criterium from couple weeks back I'm here with my teammate Chris Reichert okay welcome Chris so let's talk about the course first because I think there's a lot of interesting things going on with this course there are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 corners yeah this is I think one of the most complex race courses of the season for sure cherry pie this is the second iteration of this course I've raced Cherry Pie as two totally different races but they've both kind of had similar hairpin structures to them so you know from the start of this thing you're in parking lots and you're going around cones and it's not necessarily a defined course so as you guys watch this video you'll see that we're just going every single direction you can possibly go and the the really technical nature of this course means that it's pretty hard to move up and it's hard to chase there's only a couple of places on the course you can chase that means gaps open up that means people get tired cuz you're basically either braking or sprinting I feel like hunt on a large portion of this course window is a factor today too there was some wind on the course so what was our plan I'll let you get started what was our plan as a team coming into this race because we had like what seven guys yeah I mean it was Mike's always has a lot of numbers but this was I think one of the first you know good showdowns of the NorCal calendar where we had our our team Mike's Bikes coming out with seven or eight riders and a full squad of you know everything from sprinters like Jeff to all-around errs like myself you know we had kind of everything covered with that but we were going toe-to-toe with the Volare riders which used to be the team herbalife and now they've they've switched sponsors and they're gonna focus a little bit more in NorCal which is really exciting so thanks to Phil Mooney for making those guys yeah stick around a little bit and then on top of that there's also a lot of other really good competitors to folks like Sam bisetti Sam's an incredible sprinter took the overall at Tulsa tuff last year and he's one of the only guys that can you know take on take on sprinters like Justin Williams and climb Hills he's one of the most dangerous people in the country Lou clamp parody as well another folk another guy from Santa Rosa super-strong honestly one of the most talented people I've ever seen on a bike and so we've got a really good mix of a full team from us a full team from Volare and then we've got a lot of really strong other riders in this race and given that technical nature it makes it pretty tough so one thing that I said early on we had a lot of ideas about strategy we can we can get into that but the one thing that I thought could be potentially really dangerous for us anvil Lair was if we went because it was it was like eight Volare guys and like seven Mike's Bikes guys something like that is if we just kind of do a slugfest between mics and Volare and we just keep attacking and chasing each other down then you have the aforementioned Samba Ceti Luke land parody who are some of the nation's best sprinters who are gonna benefit from that so we had to be careful not to set up a situation where they just get a free ride all day totally and I mean like it's always tough because you know that's not a conversation you have with another team of like hey you don't chase us back and and you know we won't chase you back like you know it's almost one of these things where you you kind of have to keep trying and at some point you need to have a strategy that doesn't rely on forcing a breakaway you know we I think well I'll say from my perspective I have all the confidence in the world of Jeff to be able to close down a sprint and so I think I'm always a little more leaning towards you know let's just take control the race will ride the front and we'll make it really really fast in the end but that's not how this race played out probably that's probably good opportunity to fast forward a bit and we'll talk about how things shake out yeah let's do it all right so we are now in the heat of the moment we are in the race and given how complex this course was the first I don't know 10 15 minutes or so right we're dynamite like they were fast it's such a narrow course that not everybody can get through and you can see us here on the screen here everybody's going bananas still I spent some time off the front and now we're kind of coming back into the part of the race where everything really comes together and so Jeff is still kind of cruising along covering a little bit of a gap but now about ready to go into a breakaway mode yeah you can see that uh that there was a small group of like four that contain Chris Andrew it looked like Samba steady and Luke lamb parody so basically like some of the fastest guys in the race and then I'm looking back I'm like I'll let that go like I have two teammates up the road out of a group of four I'll let that go so I kind of forced John to attack and that's John boar Suleman he's this guy that's attacking right now again attack rage attacking again and it's worth mentioning that before I pressed record on the GoPro Chris who's on the front now you'll see him with that fancy baby blue specialized he had done a lot of work before I click go on the on the GoPro and now he's on the front but this is a weird place to attack because you can't really open a big gap through here because there's a speed limit through these these really tight corners like you just can't take these corners faster than like 25 miles an hour or whatever that number is so he kind of dangles up there and Chris is keeping him in check Chris is tired like I mentioned he's done a lot of weird Chris doesn't get tired I'm not tired Chris flicks his elbow right here he's not tired but he flicks his alibi I just want Luke to do some work they're not gonna do any work because they know it's up to us to catch John and so I know that's that kind of forces my hand so this wasn't really my plan but this is what rate good racing is about is like making snap decisions that are for the benefit of yourself and the team you saw a shadow there as I came through the corner I do have the tarun rider URI on my wheel and and that's alright with me because as long as it's not like Luke or Sam then like I just want representation that's not them thinking that like best case we make the breakaway worst case I'm making Sam and Luke do a lot of work and give him my teammate some rest bite totally I'm not tired though no I'm definitely not tired it's very early in the race oh yeah your heart rate 175 who's not tired now it got up to like 180 and Snelling will just do a little foreshadowing so you know I think this is something that that was like really well done in the race like we didn't intend on having Jeff ride a breakaway all day but one of the nice things is like once you get yourself into a position like that again you're you you have to think about how do we win this race as a team and you know Jeff is is so fast that if we can get him into a group where he can actually relax and not have to pedal through it you know a million watts that means we're pretty assured that he's gonna be one of the fastest finishers and it's on everyone else's responsibility to close that breakaway down so now that Jeff is represented up the road now Luke and Sam those guys are responsible they have to try to figure out how they're gonna get this group back yeah and this is this is a little interesting I think we'll get into this in the next segment but now here's the composition of the breakaway by the way this is the breakaway that the breakaway of the day so you have URI from from from Tarun and then you have the two Volare guys John and I forgot his name which is which is kind of to my for me Willie excuse me really with William Myers is one of my favorite people a legend in Northern California and new the new rider on Volare who I haven't had an opportunity to meet yet looks like skinny Willie not to say that regular Willie's fat but it's just as tiny or will it smaller Willie but you don't know that sound it's weird when you say you don't know like I don't race with this guy he's not from our district or at least he wasn't last year the year before so like you don't know you might have a 1800 watts sprint that I don't know about so it's that's kind of an interesting thing I think we'll talk about that more a little later let's cut forward and maybe talk about race dynamics from my perspective and then from your perspective back in the field let's do it okay we are in the closing laps now and we still are all together the four of us in the breakaway and what have I been doing well I've been taking kind of little baby half polls because I don't want to get countered by the the two of oler guys which they were doing the whole race understandably so but I'm stubborn and they couldn't shake me so I'm still here unflappable I'm still here I didn't want them to ride away the worst thing you can do in a breakaway as a teammate is to get dropped from the breakaway hey so I didn't want that to happen and I'm still here and they've kind of they kind of given up on on attacking me for a while but your cm you see I'm coming through here I'm taking these really wide lines so it's hard to pass me it's hard to pass through this section anyway but I mean my power isn't really going above about 280 and this isn't what the lair wants because they like having the stacked breakaway so they want to keep it fast and they have motivation to stay on the front and and keep it fast so you're gonna see in about a second there goes John attacking really close to me and the counter-attacks have started back up again and I'm forced to chase this back you have to do a big effort and I snap it pretty hard at the beginning because I want to make sure the guys behind me I have to do a big snap in power too and as we approach this corner I'm like John's coming in a little too hot and sure enough boom stuffs it and um we can laugh now because he's okay right exactly in the moment you've Jeff nearly pulled over to see I was sure you okay about who we need to apply a gauze pack oh he had a lot of skin missing on that day for sure so no but that brings up a really interesting poacher John so John crashing is unfortunate like that's all we it always sucks I hate crashing out of races especially I hate crashing within the limit you know you know now there are no for more free laps we're very closely into the race but to that point you know jeff has been up in the breakaway he's got two Volare riders and another writer from to run and really kind of has to walk through those guys right what we're doing in the back the rest of the team we want to keep the gap manageable if we all of a sudden let the gap between us the main group and Jeff in the breakaway explode now all of a sudden the the Volare riders are gonna start one-two in him like really hard they're gonna hit him they're gonna make him do the work they can slow the race down they can kind of really start to control the tactics a lot a lot a lot more closely by us in the back in the main field keeping them close that forces everyone up there to ride or they're going to be caught so when John crashed there a couple of minutes ago what that really allowed us to do in the back of the group is go like well fine yeah numbers are even now now we're really confident Jeff can win it I think exactly right now you know there's no lead out for a sprinter they can't won to him on the last it's not gonna make Jeff have to chase anything down if they want this thing to stick out in front they all have to work together yeah and um and the nature of this course I was able to see the gap back to my teammates every lap and we were keeping you guys I don't know what it was 30 seconds or something is that where you worry about okay there's a little a little less than that somewhere in like the twenty second range you know is just like a little more than would be really comfortable to go across like you get maybe make it each spot there right because like you said if you get too close then Sam or Luke or Sam hem lugar both have it in their legs just to shoot across on the uphill tailwind totally and so like now that's what's happening so Mike's our team we have taken you know all of our control away and it has fallen almost entirely onto the shoulders of Sam bisetti and Luke limb party to try to pull this back and they are attacking they're coming over the top they're trying to really close down this gap and it was really interesting you can see us coming the other direction there Luke has just taken a massive flyer trying to shut this gap down and I am sitting on the back of that just waiting yeah cuz I know I've got Jeff up in the front and I feel confident that he's gonna be able to take this sprint in one lap to go and I feel confident too and I think we're just play it through yeah last lap yeah we're coming into last lap anyway so what do you how are you trying to position yourself then here you've got one lap to go you've got two riders the Volare rider is taking a really long pull here where do you want to be well as long as he's working as long as he's working I like this position he's he's probably doing a little bit more work than he needs to but the difference is is I have a teammate in Chris here in the group behind granted he's coming with some strong guys but I know that they're gonna be doing most of the work chris is gonna be relatively fresh we've already saw this you don't get tired but I can still kind of I can still rely on that like hey I got a teammate back there so I'm making sure and just I know we can't see it here but something that's really important you there are three of you in this breakaway right you're not gonna see the tearoom guy because he's like you guys you guys do the work and and you're gonna see I do take a kind of a slightly stronger pull here I'm definitely not gonna put myself in a position where I think I'm capable of losing the race so I'm gonna do a poll here two key to keep our gap open enough to get to the finish but I'm not going to go so deep that that like I lose my sprint legs but I'm gonna help a little bit did you have indicators throughout the course of this race as to you know what to be prepared for for them from the sprint like did you expect to be able to out sprint these guys or how did you figure that out good question and as I alluded to earlier I don't know about a little Willie who's attacking right now by the way boom there he goes he's taking pretty ripping line that's aggressive yeah yeah and and I see it's choosing a good time too because if you open a gap coming down this hill everyone's doing equal work and um and I didn't know if he had a sprint um he's an attack so many times that he probably can't have a sprint it's true but the fact that he's doing this tells me he doesn't have a sprint because if he's going with like 800 meters to go Road ever that was he that's that's a big indication to me that he doesn't want it to come down to a sprint Yuri who's on my wheel this whole time he's fresher than us he's done zero polls in the last like quarter of this race and um he's one cat three races he's a recent upgrade from cat 3 so he's kind of a dark horse too I would prefer to be third wheel in this situation but I'm kind of forced here in second wheel it's too late to move around at this point and this is this isn't uphill right here and he just opens it up so hard right here and I'm like oh I'm desperate for a second I'm like holy I might lose because he really ripped it hard but he fades Jeff when I saw this video for the first time I was confident you lost oh my god for a second I thought I did too but that's like that's like a 25 second sprint and he probably started at really high power but he didn't carry it to the line and and fortunately I had the legs to and then the stubbornness to come across and close it down for the wind so I'm super stoked on Cherry Pie cuz I haven't won Cherry Pie since I there's a cat for I think it's been been a minute closed down for the first team win of the year yeah excited alright guys well um hey thanks for tuning in and stay tuned for Snelling coverage here in the next a little bit subscribe like do all that stuff that we appreciate and Chris good having you on thank you see you guys in the next one

Channel: NorCal Cycling

Views: 64,279

Rating: 4.9794402 out of 5

Keywords: cycling, criterium, tips, p/1/2, racing, strategy, gopro, win, sprint, leadout, crash

Id: cOFfVK9OQzY

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/theNOOBcyclist]

These multi-rider power overlays are amazing!

[u/aplcr944s2]

I might start protesting these videos until we get a NBD with the new team bike....come on!

[u/crazylsufan]

Looking forward to throwing this one on when I hop on the trainer later

[u/Joris818]

I just LOVE these videos !!!

[u/ilovecakeshark]

I was at this race, the corners were nasty and the roundabout was a very difficult challenge