Avoiding Crashes and Going Inside the Legion Leadout - 2019 CBR Criterium P/1/2

hey guys welcome back to another frenemies video I am sitting next to my fellow spandex wearing friend Brian Larson and where are we today Brian yeah we're in sunny Southern California in Carson California just over the just a block away from Compton beautiful Compton beautiful and this is the CBR crit is that what's called this is like a series of races isn't it correct yeah they run a series all spring long and I think this was the finale there might be one other race coming up here but yeah this was this was the finale and it's a always around the same course it's the same general kind of industrial park R it's a nice four corner when D crit we have those up here in NorCal too but um I got a safer for you listeners who aren't familiar with the California racing scene so Cal I gotta say they got us beat and crits I think they do they these races are so much faster than anything up here yeah so the big major team in this race correct me if I'm wrong it's Legion and they have Justin Williams well they have the Williams brothers but yeah they have CJ Justin and Cory I don't know if you know that there's three Williams brothers they're all fast they're all fast justin is the national champion you'll see him wearing the Stars and Stripes Jersey but um yeah talk about your your plan coming into this race yeah so Alex this was after a three-day weekend and Alex and I my teammate we were down there and we were just kind of focused on training and we weren't really sure where our sprint would line up so you know this was the last day we had nothing left to hold back for and so we were we were going all in on a sprint finish with potentially a late move flier of long sprint but you got into something early on that was kind of unexpected yeah Alex and I both got into a move in the first about 20 minutes in people were starting to get tired and we rode up the road but you know Legion wasn't in it and like you said they were the dominant force and so we had to we had to shut that down and I think Justin himself was the one who brought it back when when both Alex and I hurry up the road as well as Tyler lock and column so good good heavy headers there as well cool let's uh let's fast forward a bit and and we'll talk about how this race unfolds all right so we fast-forwarded now we are about fifteen kilometers to go and and what's been going on yeah so we've had about 70 minutes of really really hard fast racing and no moves have actually stayed away up to this point but there's been a couple valiant efforts Legion and every almost every single move up and tell this move here we're Legion put to think two three maybe even four riders up the road and all of a sudden they became dangerous so so what's your guys plan so you have sprinters up the road and you have the major team represented up the road are you worried this is gonna stay away yeah I am very worried I've seen this and I've watched a lot of Justin Williams as videos and Corey Williams as videos and all these races and 98% of the time it comes to a sprint so I was the old sprint it comes to his field so you're thinking this is coming back I am thinking that I'm thinking well this is actually a good thing because we just sent the two strongest sprinters in the race up the road to do a threshold test for 20 minutes left in this race and and look at the way you're riding on the back here I mean you're just Hale gunning you're saving a lot of energy yeah gunning is like the most under underestimated overlooked skill yeah so especially on like a windy course where there's a lot of acceleration and deceleration zin to the headwinds and tailwind and crosswinds I'm just surfing yeah I'm just surfing having my ties at the back and and so Tail gunning I'm gonna try to explain it you can correct me if I'm wrong here because I feel like people have different interpretations of what this means but what it means to me is you're not you're not concerning yourself with what's going on at the front of the race you're sitting at the back or very close to the back and you're letting gaps open up through the corners you're not touching your brakes at all you're carrying all your speed through the corners and you're like just basically doing this efficient type of riding where you're not overly concerned about gaps opening up in front of you that's the drawback yeah and actually very specifically as I like gaps open going into the corner so that I don't have to touch my brakes going through the corner yeah you're not keeping this tight like like three four inches between your front wheel and the guy in front of you exactly I'm totally okay letting like a few bike links open up knowing that they're about to slow down and I basically want to make contact when they've already reaccelerating it out of the corner perfect so you're saving energy here you're gearing up for a sprint you're feeling that it's gonna probably come back to a sprint based on how these guys race yeah they're very sure it's gonna come back or be very close and I just have to save all those bullets knowing that even if it's not a sprint I still have up maybe a 2 or 3 K effort left in me and you have Alex and you have another teammate too and you're telling them what at this point I'm telling them it's probably gonna come down to a sprint but I actually do adjust with about seven kilometers to go and talk to Alex and say hey like nobody's bringing this back we have to take the action and I tell him to go up the road okay let's uh let's actually jam forward and no let's talk about that alright so here we are coming into four laps to go and Bryan spent the last little bit here getting cozy at the back saving energy but um but now I think maybe you're getting a little bit concerned that the brakes not coming back what's going on yeah we're trying to move up towards the pointy end of the race here and I'm actually where you could see Alex's little shifter there that's we're getting a little close and we're having a little conversation about how we think that we're gonna have to go across this and I said hey I will let you know if we go and actually ride around this moment on you can't see my shadow but I basically like I point forward saying you have to go right now and right as I say that here it goes Tyler lock one of the strongest riders in the race alex goes with them and a whole bunch of groups here are kind of going across now while it looks like this is still one unified group everyone's about a bike length off of each other just scrambling we're going 35 everyone's getting a little desperate 36 miles an hour 7 miles an hour like this is crazy these are those SoCal crits right 37 but we're coasting here is a little bit of a tailwind and at this moment here coming into the what is a uphill headwind it doesn't look uphill but it is a little bit uphill here this is where the scramble has happened you see kind of guys are moving left and right and this is where we're having to make the decision is do you end up getting all the way across that or do you let somebody else take control of the race and I'm looking over my shoulder here and seeing that there's no control legion who is normally responsible for these types of things is nowhere to be seen because they're in the break there's four like four of them you set up and don't know there's their net deploying up there I don't know they're they were just like the probably ten of them by the end of the race up the road and so and you could see there's a hand up they're calling for help it's getting desperate here at the front yeah and so there he was calling for help and actually his teammate this guy on my wheel here and so he's not able to pull through three laps to go folks and again this is really oh and out slows down this is really hard here yeah you can't tell how hard it has been and right there you see through those wheels is Alex jumping and so Alex did jump and you can see the brake just going through the corner there Alec has has a little bit of separation and what's interesting here is that Alex while they're almost on his wheel he just keeps going and they all flicked their elbows and nobody can roll through here see we're all kind of scrambling we're all scrambling we were on his wheel through that corner and he just blows him off of the wheel and he actually gets almost across there you can see in his white helmet yeah yep you can see that white punk helmet going through that corner and he's gets across right up there and this is where there's people are looking over to see how one's swinging out to the left swing in total chaos nobody has control and I actually really like these types of finishes because when there's no control people tend to default to the conservative route they hold back rather than going for it and so this favors my finish right now the brakes okay you know brakes tire coming back but what ends up happening here and this is actually the winning move is happening right at this moment is two more Legion Riders jumped out of that breakaway right when Alex got there so a breakaway from the breakaway and Alex just missed it he got onto the back - you guys went off the front right and that was my fault for not instructing Alex that he's gonna have to run through that and I don't know if you remember we talked about that on one of our Viso videos right so the stuff at Alviso applies in these 35 mile-an-hour greats that's why we that's why we we go out to all these so it's like the best race practice but he should have attacked right through that break he would have been on on to legion legion guys wheels who knows what would have happened then they might not have rode as hard as they did but but no I would change the dynamic of the race that guy was going backwards he was part of the breakaway for sure yeah he was going backwards at about 10 he's down the runs yelling looking back it's total chaos now here's the national champ to your left yep yep and that's Justin Williams and I'm bright backup on Alex's wheel and if we have that audio on I'm screaming at him that he's got to go we're at two laps to go and now that I like the chaos but it's a little bit it hasn't closed down and right here Justin Williams is coming up next - Dante who's the guy with the white socks why choose right at my ten o'clock here and I'm on his hip and he's telling Dante you're sprinting that tells me justin is a little bit tired justin was up the road yeah doing threshold work so he's telling his teammate hey it's you today exactly he's jumping on that wheel that was that was smart you're listening to their conversation and that's what I'm doing here and I get up in that CJ right there so I'm surfing CJ's wheel and CJ is going to go ahead and find Justin's wheel so now we're coming into one and a half laps to go this is the Tailwind stretch and I am a little bit far back I'm not panic but you're in good company I wouldn't be panicked either if I see that the national champ next to me plus his lead-out train for for the best of the rest I wouldn't be panicked either this is actually a really good position even though true like you are a little bit further back than if you were going like full road but yeah but man you're you're basically treating yourself as one of the the team Legion Cali top guys right now right but I lose it here so I do fall off the wheel and then it moves hard right I think coming up here he Dante does a great job he does not leave Justin's wheel it doesn't matter if there's somebody next to him in front of him or in any case he's gonna stay on that wheel that's really important for any sprinter to understand that you need to stay on your lead outs wheel it's not the lead outs responsibility it's your responsibility as a sprinter and the Williams brothers practice this stuff - they're so good at it yeah class yeah yep check out their their Instagram and everything so there's a little bump in here yeah yeah a little close this is what everyone thinks about when they think so Kyle crits right here yeah and the challenge for me is I really dislike these really wide you know Boulevard type finishes and straights yeah because see this where Alex gets swarmed there Alex in front of me at the Cali KITT he gets one you can get hit with both sides right everyone can swarm you on either side left or right and I'm designing I had told Alex you have to go like hit it everything and previously in the race and this is where I also failed to instruct Alex I told him I wanted him to hit it with two corners to go so alex has already used two three bullets in the last three or four laps and I think he had misunderstood me when I told him to hit it right now that we were basically calling off his to corner to go attack instead he conserved a little bit and ended up in a little bit a little bit farther back than I had originally planned now I am really far back here you're starting to lose though the Williams brothers wheels here right with a half a lap to go we have a tail crosswind from the left here and I actually don't even have to basically use a bullet I think I even coasted for this oh it's so epic and then you know taking a look here we had Justin pulls over and yeah so we're gonna pause really quick here so this is a critical moment in this finish because I have to now decide which direction am I going here like in this case there's the left side of the road is gonna be moving forward and I have to decide if I'm gonna be capable of moving left or if I'm gonna have to go over the top on the right side of the road and then we're over the right side of these five riders you have this little gap right here - this is what you're contemplating right yes it's looks a lot bigger on the camera than it really was and actually I have Dante who is the Sprinter today is right on my hip you can see his rear wheel and you're in the rear cam he is right on your hip yeah like we're like together we're one rider I know yes and actually then we can see that Justin actually moves hard left to get on this blue rider and I cut at least like three feet left and that caused a little bit of a flick and then we see Alex actually there in the POC helmet gets hooked on the inside with one of the riders who is advancing and gets taken out of contention right there takes a nap with two corners to go but I've managed to go ahead and get right on top of Justin Williams this wheel here and now I'm actually in this sweet spot national champs wheel doesn't get better than the national champs wheel who I know is gonna sprint into the last corner this is exactly what it is does when he opens it up here I actually gapped Dante and I'm stoked because it's about a 20 second sprint here he flicks the elbow and actually again we're gonna stop just a quick second here he flicks the elbow and before that he looked under under the saddle if you guys want everyone he actually looks under the saddle realizes oh that's not my teammate and then he cuts left I was the heavens opened up and then the heavy clothes because he's no amateur this isn't as his first rodeo he knows what's going on he doesn't let you take the inside like that nope and he knows that they have a double sprint in their legs and I don't I have that long sprint likes yeah we got like photographers who come to races please watch out racers alright thanks for coming back my frenemy Brian Larson thanks for coming back with another joint commentary and thanks for toning the line down in SoCal yeah I gotta represent down with those crypt boys in LA keep your eyes peeled for a more content and I hope to have you back yeah thanks

Channel: NorCal Cycling

Views: 288,740

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

Id: O2D9s5YOO6U

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/flyinfinni]

Great video. Man that race was so chaotic! I don't think I'd be able to keep my composure in that kind of tight shifty bunch!

[u/furyousferret]

SoCal p12 crits are always entertaining!

[u/VertuteTheCat]

Those photographers at the end, what were they thinking, and why did the race organizers allow it? People are barreling in there at 35 MPH. That would have been a trip to the hospital for all involved, if not worse.

[u/nonamecat1]

“takes a nap with two corners to go” LOL

never heard a crash described that way but I like it.

[u/AvocadoToast91]

Sand bag at the back of a crit for 89 minutes, tell your teammate to do everything, sprint for a top 5