The Hardest Weekend in Crit Racing - Tulsa Tough 2021 Pro Field

hey what's up guys welcome back to the channel with me my teammate creighton gruber welcome creighton howdy hey man so i am super jealous because i was out of town but you were able to race tulsa tough which is a big time national level race it's three days in tulsa oklahoma and um i have your i have some footage i slapped a gopro on creighton's bike and um we're going to share that footage in a minute talk about your experience but first let's talk about you for for a second uh just so that the fans know you're the youngest uh youngest guy on the team but are you you're like a teenager right yeah so i'm 19. just a couple years out of uh this will be my second year out of the junior ranks tulsa end is actually my uh first experience in these bigger bigger end crits you know coming into this race uh your coach matt what was what were his tips for training coming into this race well i uh had a couple like setbacks like like with training heading into the race like i got a concussion snowboarding and then i got kind of ran off the road by a car and took a small bike so i had to take a couple weeks off which kind of hurt my my base so we kind of just threw in as much speed work as i could since it's just short curt racing and kind of hope for the best and we're going to talk about how that training you know suited you uh when we when we go through the race footage but now let's talk about roman roman is our team director and he distributes like um you know team strategy information and what were his tips for you being a 19 year old just coming out of the junior ranks first time doing this big race after a year and a half hiatus or so like what was his advice for you well he his big points were you know kind of you know stay relaxed in the race uh sit on the first lap pin it to try and get a good position and then the next few laps just kind of hold that position until everything settles down and then once it like slows down a bit after those first like 10 15 minutes find a couple places on the course where you can move up and just focus on moving up on each of those so instead of just trying to move up the entire course you have some places to rest and then some places to to actually move up totally totally and look out for crashes right because nobody's raced for about a year and a half so let's uh dive into the footage and see how that plan worked out sounds good all right what was the last thing i said look out for crashes is that right creighton yep and then there's one like right there we are like seven seconds into this race mate actually maybe that was like four seconds into this race i don't know how there's already somebody in the pit too like this is just total chaos right from the gun and i don't know how did you feel man this is like this is like big time crit racing and uh you hadn't trained much you hadn't raced much and then it's just like here you go man hit the ground running yeah you know had the had a little bit of those pre-race nerves but once you get going a couple laps in and then you're just feeling like racing you know yeah and and i just want to point out 184 beats per minute and we're like three corners into this race that's that's already above my max this is like my max heart rate and creighton is i think you're half hummingbird or something your heart rate is not going to come below this this is the lowest your guys are going to see it so pretty crazy so let's talk about this course right there are um what 15 corners on this course or something yeah i'm going to count them one two three four five six seven eight corners on this course so you're either exiting or entering a corner this entire race yeah except for the the stretch that we're on right now and then the the finished stretch those were got a got a few pedals pedal strokes in before then but uh yeah it was a lot of turning and look how many people so it's like 150 riders here 167. once geez 167. i don't know i mean when it's single file like this you guys are taking up like half the course it seems like and yeah and tell us about your starting position so at the start we uh got confused with the the gates leading in and uh most of the team except for i think andrew had to start at the back that's rough you guys i need you to understand that like at the back of 167 riders on a course like this with the field this talented it is incredibly hard to move up and and roman's advice was hey lap one go for it almost an all-out effort right yeah had to had to fight for that hundredth place or whatever i was in well it makes a big difference because you know if somebody gets dropped 80th place in front of you or something like that you might be getting dropped and not even realize it so there's a reason for that i mean i can't really speak for roman but i understand the motivation behind that that advice which is like hey establish your position early on because once the big teams hit the front aka once legion hits the front and starts setting tempo it's going to be so hard to move up and by the way it's also going to be hard to move back when it's single file unless you're you're blowing up you know and you're you're cracking then you can start moving back but but otherwise like it's really hard to move up once things get established so that's the the motivation behind that advice from roman and it looks like you're doing a good job here how did you feel at a rate of this level well i felt a little rusty just with the black erasing lacquer racing but um yeah it it it was a lot smoother than i was expecting it to be but besides all like you know seeing the the power jump up to like six or seven hundred out of each corner it just took a minute to kind of get used to the corners i guess sure and this is a new bike for you too so you got a lot of things going against you on this day but you know the team brought you out to give you experience and and i was impressed to see how you performed um let's talk about the numbers really fast people are going to be curious first of all you're um you're a light guy how much do you weigh like 148 pounds i think 148 pounds what was your average power it was a and you're normalized 271. so this is impressive to me um there's only what's impressive for a couple of reasons let's let's start with your average heart rate was approaching your average power yeah it's crazy oh it's so crazy to me no but let's talk about your pet your power real fast um only 24 watts separated your average from your normalized power which in other words you were you were smooth and consistent on a course this technical after you know not really racing this year you know a new bike fighting some injury like you had a lot of stuff working against you and i just want to commend you on a very solid performance for first of all solid power numbers for a guy of your of your size and also a consistent effort 247 average 271 normalized pretty solid well my main goal heading into this was just to ride as smooth as possible because i knew the punches will get you get to you eventually so if i could be as smooth as possible maybe it'd get to me later in the race and and how did this race finish for you uh i finished about mid pack i think around 80th or somewhere in the 80s and confidence wise you know you started this race they blew that whistle your heart rate was already 180 beats per minute how are you feeling um confidence wise taking these corners riding with these guys the fastest crit racers in the country heading into the next couple days i i felt a lot more comfortable on the bike i felt like i could do a lot better in the corners than when i first started we were all really impressed with your effort um in this race and it really bodes well for for you as a developing athlete and especially for the rest of this weekend so let's dive into day two shall we sounds good okay so this is day two this is the arts district criterium and creighton you were feeling confident after the first night and you were going to take some of that confidence into the second day at this crit let's talk about this quick first of all l shape so it's less technical but on this course we have a hill right yeah so on the first right-hand corner coming up after this one there's a a hill that's not too not not too steep or anything but as you'll see when we come into this corner it bunches up so you kind of come into it pretty slow and that's so rough and this is why position's so important because you guys need to understand like yeah look i mean look at this you just went from 27 down to 17 to hit this corner right before the bottom of a hill that's like the worst and you're gonna see as a result you're up to like five six seven hundred watts sustained which again let's not forget you're 148 pounds that's a lot of power the front riders are doing 27 probably through that corner maybe even faster you're doing 17. this is a big problem yeah and unlike you know local races where like i could just move to the front on local p12 races and that's not me patting myself on the back saying like i'm super strong it's just a matter of me taking good lines through corners and stuff like that but at this high level like it's just hard to find those lines right like those those gaps that open up other riders have already occupied those good lines yeah for sure and like especially when there's like you know 160 150 guys that know how to take those good lines can't can't quite find them and that's how you find success at this really high level national level crit is yeah of course being really strong helps but that's just part of the story because you can be the strongest guy in the group but if you're taking bad lines it doesn't mean anything so you have to find those areas on the course there might be a corner there or a straightaway over here where you can make up one or two spots per lap without having to nuke a thousand watts were you able to find any lines on this course where you could move up like that yeah there was a couple i was testing out like heading into this first corner on the course sometimes on the outside the uh along this cement wall it would open up and you could run on the outside of it and just carry all of your speed through that corner right because the name of the game is is is preserving your speed and and not touching your brakes and continuing to pedal because even coasting is like braking in a way because you are not advancing your speed forward right you're getting slowed down by the wind you want to continue a consistent amount of power and that's why the riders on the front are able to to be so smooth and consistent like the you know the williams brothers and team legion yeah they're they're really strong they're crazy talented but um one of the reasons they're they're so strong in the sprint in particular is they are being um pulled around by their really strong teammates around the course very consistently right like they hardly ever have to spike up to a thousand watts until it's the last 200 meters of the race because they're so good at positioning themselves and so are their teammates so so everyone else is kind of fighting to do the same right and and taking that good corner that good line through the corner allows you to do that that's always a win right do you feel that same way creighton when you take like an excellent line carry all of your speed you're passing people it's like a little win yeah for sure like it's always fun like when you get a really good one and move up like 10 places 10 15 places it's always like oh i need to try to do that again but then it changes the next lap yeah you said it exactly and you said it earlier like you know sometimes you'll move up five six places through a corner and it'll feel great and then somehow before the next corner you've lost five or six places and it's just all back it's you know you describe it as a washing machine yeah so there's definitely a skill involved there you know people new to the sport just think hey strongest man wins that's the way bike racing is but it's really not it's a skill sport at a high level but um with that being said do you happen to have the power numbers handy for this race um i don't but i could pull them up really quick pull those up i'd be curious to see what you did for this um this second race because yeah you were taking great lines but um yeah you know this today's in the afternoon obviously and uh you know the heat and the humidity this is out in tulsa remember may have gotten to you a little bit yeah average power of 228 and normalized power of 248. so the power numbers are lower and that probably has a lot to do with the heat right yeah and actually the heart rate the heart rate numbers were also lower and like the first day was uh 198 and then the second day was 193 average oh just oh just 193 beats per minute average oh yeah it's so crazy to me um so so that's a couple of things it's the heat and humidity that got to you but then also let's not forget like you you mentioned uh you mentioned earlier you'd kind of skipped a lot of your endurance and your base training because of some injuries that set you back early in the season so you skipped right to speed work and this is where it gets you guys because yeah feel like you could work on a lot of speed work and be really good for a crit but then a crit and then another crit the next day might start might start to catch up to you did you feel fatigued your heart rate came down by five beats per minute that's that's not nothing yeah no i i definitely felt more fatigued like uh by the end of the first day you know it being so hot i was definitely cramping and uh i don't know anyone who's had a cramped nose the next day it's not too fun yeah yeah that's rough um so ultimately how long did this race last for you uh 45 minutes but like about half the field was shelled in this race right yeah i think i think maybe 50 60 guys finished so if you could go back and do anything different if you could take this race over again other than going back to january and training more the obvious thing um what would be something that you could improve upon if you were to do this again say next year well i i was definitely testing out a whole lot more lines um i was taking some riskier lines too like this corner sometimes i would just try and cut it up the middle and just have to slam on the brakes so that that's when you have to spike up to like a thousand watts that'll catch up to you real quick for sure so like maybe finding like the smoothest lines even if it doesn't move you up as many places just try and take it easier yeah you know it's a funny thing that happens some courses you can just find those lines quickly and get into a good rhythm but if you're not having a day like that and you're just struggling it can be it can be a really hard day out there so that definitely looks like that's what happened with you today so um with that said maybe uh let's move into day three and talk about how crybaby hill worked out sounds good all right man all right day three creighton cry baby hill the famous crybaby hill what what were your expectations coming into this course well i didn't have many expectations i was just you know again looking to uh like find good places to move up and also uh trying to stay in as long as i could this is a course guys um if you haven't heard of it it is famous for it's it's hill it's got it's also it's two part hill right so the first section maybe 30 seconds long you're gonna see we're coming into it right here really steep really steep and um they used to have it open for the fans it used to be just total chaos so now they've they put barriers up but um i just man i love that racing is back like all these fans out just look at the the vibe here the atmosphere it's insane and and look at his power right like we're talking five six hundred watts and to put that number in perspective that's 30 seconds at seven and a half half watts per kilogram every lap that's how this course goes and there's no way around it there's no hiding there's no taking a better line it's just the hill goes up and you go hard right yeah and you get a little respite here which really if i think i think this is the spot to move up there this really shouldn't be a rest area if you're trying to move up in the field we can talk about that in a minute and then you take this next corner and it the hill just goes the road just goes up again right yeah no you definitely should move up in that area if you can but like you know at that point a lot of guys are just like fried from that first little steep bit yep yep which is why that's probably the best place to move up but uh but it's easier said than done but then you're hit with another 15 second you know 7.5 watt per kilogram effort before you come into this downhill and then you hit a more than 90 whatever whatever this is this is like a 150 degree corner and look at how gingerly these folks are taking it in front of you and this is why when you're on the front and you can just rail that curb to curb uh you're rewarded for being at the business end of the race and um you don't have to deal with these guys taking you know scared really tired corners because when you're tired your judgment's off and you don't corner as well so so did you find any spots on this course to move up efficiently um not not too many it kind of varied each lap coming out of that downhill sometimes people would take it a little wider and you could go up the inside um sometimes into the corner going into the hill right here yeah but it it kind of varied each lap that is important to carry your speed into a hill like this you know um if you have you guys do a local race local crit that's got a hill in it like so important to preserve your speed into the bottom of the hill that that pays dividends um as you approach the top of the hill you don't have to smash a thousand watts or 600 watts like creighton is doing here which is crazy and you're gonna see riders i'm not even kidding guys 61 kilometers to go already starting to go backwards in this race that's how hard it is in the heat the humidity the third day let's talk about your power i think it's a good time to talk about your power yeah so i believe my average power was like 254 but my normalized was 300. so that's where you're gonna see that big variability index i've talked about it on the channel before that's that measure of the difference between your average power and your normalized power and what it does is it shows how varied your effort was like how many surges you had to do and on a course like this it's just so hard to avoid it it's almost impossible to avoid it you're gonna be doing tons of power up that hill you're gonna be doing zero power down that hill and and as i was speaking i saw some riders already falling backwards so um i know that you found a couple of good good areas in this course to uh to move up let's fast forward all right creighton coming through the start finish we are uh about 10 minutes into this race we've probably already shed about 30 riders not even exaggerating and uh you're gonna demonstrate a move here on the inside uh set this up for us what's going on so uh previously when the race started there was like a a cart or or some type of like car stuck on the course and uh it was there the entire race until this lap and i saw everyone still stayed away from where the car was and there was just a big open gap coming around this corner so like right here you can just see the open gap and i just i just decided to send it 800 watts 700 something watt there goes eight 900 watts and i don't know i mean there's 10 there's 20 there's 25 i don't know that must have been about 30 30 riders he moved up right there but i don't know man 204 beats 205 beats per minute it's so gnarly like moving up on the hill isn't something that i would do personally um you're a lighter rider so it might be a little bit different for you but uh in this moment right here what were you thinking were you thinking like that was a good idea was that a bad idea well i apparently i thought it was a reasonable idea because i went and did 800 watts again but i the next lap i definitely decided to pay or definitely paid for it but in this moment you're like hey we're going to do it again and we're going to move to the front next time yeah i thought it was smart i mean like in your defense you moved up 25 wheels but it's so hard once you dig a hole like that um and get up to 205 beats per minute oh that guy almost crashed yeah jeez i just noticed that it's really hard to get yourself out of that hole especially in a course like this where you're gonna you're gonna recover on the downhill for what 20 seconds and then you're just back at it again like there's just no areas where you can just be like okay i'm gonna sit in recover and then we can kind of reassess and i can think about it again there is no reassessing there is no sitting in i can see people already making that corner look at that long line of riders there's people already halfway up the hill that's so gnarly yeah no i i definitely did not recover heading into this like you can see i i was not able to hit those peak powers that i did the last lap that guy just skipped the gear man i'm just discovering a bunch of little gems in here that i didn't notice when we first looked at this so if you could get in the time machine and go back and do that again what do you think is the better move i definitely still would have moved up there but you know maybe only 15 20 places instead and like you know done maybe 500 watts instead of 700. totally totally yeah like like you don't need to make you don't need to move up the entire field like on one lap um even if you can doesn't doesn't mean you should right like yeah definitely so um i totally i totally agree i think that's the sensible thing like maybe instead of doing 800 watts um even though that you saw that gap and it looks so appetizing like do 500 move up five spots preserve your your position through the corner through the rest of the course and then try that again each lap eventually you'll make your way to the front which brings us back to what i talked about earlier which is finding success at this national level isn't about making these hero moves from you know from way back all the way up to the front and one lap it's about preserving your your speed preserving your momentum and finding those locations on the course where you can make up two three wheels at a time consistently throughout the course of the race but so so with that being said how much longer did you last in this race um i i was probably in there for five more minutes but but in your defense like you know i've already talked about all these other things with the bike and with the training um and this is the third and hardest day with the heat and humidity um there were like 30 or 40 other people who had already called it quits before you did so um yeah don't be a tough day yeah don't be so hard on yourself and um and that's the reason why you know we wanted you out there is get that experience and you're 19 years old and you're gonna come back out and you're gonna be you're gonna be winning this race soon enough so uh so super excited uh to see what's to come for you man and um it was a real pleasure having you on the channel so thanks for taking the time and uh we'll catch you guys in the next one sounds good thanks for having me

Channel: NorCal Cycling

Views: 37,528

Rating: 4.9740891 out of 5

Keywords: cycling, criterium, tips, p/1/2, racing, strategy, gopro, win, sprint, leadout, crash, Pro cycling, bike, bikes, bicycles, bicycle, road bike, road bikes, American cycling, zwift, indoor cycling, road race, Tour de France, peloton

Id: yFUYiW74Gx4

Length: 21min 45sec (1305 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021