It’s nice to have a decent race in your own backyard. The Eagle Criterium used to be part of the Tour of Eagle stage race, but this year it was scaled back to just the criterium. This event coincides with the Eagle Fun Days, basically a carnival and rodeo that comes to town just as shool ends for local kids, marking the unofficial start of summertime!
Despite a forecast of possible thunderstorms, the weather held out and it was a great night for racing. Heather was the first to race just after 7 PM. She had an OK race, but she wasn’t as dominant as she usually is in these local races. She has been feeling a cold coming on and hasn’t been able to train as much as she would like to. When it came to the final lap, she was in good position going into the third corner, but a rider tried to take an inside line and forced her to cars on the coned-off side of Eagle Rd. So she had to brake hard in order to not go into the traffic and that allowed two other women to go by her. Fortunately, no one went down due to this incident, but Heather was frustrated by it. She and the other rider reconciled later on, so all is well on the emotional front.
My race was the last of the evening and it was fairly dark when we started a little past 9 PM. This year they had construction lights on the two backside corners which hopefully would give enough light as the remaining dusk light turned to darkness. I started at the front line and hammered from the gun. I was surprised to notice a rider to my left, was doing the same! I had to do a double-take, to make sure they were really going for it and then got on their wheel for the first two corners. Then I pulled through and kept the pace high. My legs were feeling good and I was riding the Trek I just built up and if felt great as well. I was hesitant to do my first race on it, but after a few laps, I was glad I did. After the first few laps, I settled down a little bit but still stayed at the front. At one point, a dangerous two-person break got 20 meters on the field so I went after them. It was a tough effort but I did manage to bridge up to them. But without all the dominant teams represented we were caught by the field a couple laps later.
By the second half of the race, the backstretch was completely dark. It was like we entered a tunnel of darkness and you had to rely on the reflections of the bikes around you to know where they were. Once you got close to the third corner, the construction lights provided ample visibility. Surprisingly, there weren’t any crashes. I think mostly because everyone was in the same boat and rode extra-cautiously on that stretch.
With five laps to go, I was in good position up front and stayed there until two laps to go. Then on the backstretch, the riders ahead of me slowed and another set of riders came to the front. This is called being “swarmed”. So by the last lap I was a in pretty bad position and had to fight to move up again. I managed to move up a bit by corner three, but since I was still a few places back the rider in front of me stopped sprinting. He was considerate and moved out of the way but it was enough that I couldn’t keep my speed up and close the gap to the top seven riders. So I pretty much sprinted on my own for 8th place. My teammate Jim was one fo the riders that surged and he ended up 7th. After the race we hung around and talked to our friends and neighbors. I ended up riding home in the darkness and didn’t get off the bike until past 11!