Bear Creek Criterium #1 P/1/2/3 2011

May 4, 2011

Bear Creek Crits are during the month of May in Houston.  They start the real criterium racing season for the Texas Gulf Coast.  The course is really amazing (rivaling the Driveway) with smooth roads and an interesting 270 degree turn about 300 yards to the start/finish line.  The other turns in the course are very sweeping and easy.  The only thing that the driveway has that this doesn’t is more options for different courses. But, they had free tacos and muscle milks, something that I have never gotten at the Driveway!!  Below is a video of the course filmed by Alchemy Cycles.

The first edition of the series saw a good crowd of about 35-40 in the P/1/2/3 field.  Shama had 5 people for the race, including me, Bill Fiser, Eric Attayi, John Sanchez, and Davis.  The most notable rider (IMO) was Kevin Kremke, riding for Bike Barn with about 8 teammates.  My race plan was to mark Kevin Kremke, and to alternate between blocking for my teammates if they got in breakaways and attacking.  It was sure to be a fast race.

Within the first couple of laps, Kevin attacked, mostly to see how motivated the field was.  I was going to be his shadow tonight, and went with him on the move.  He is fast!  After a hard pull he twitched his elbow signaling for me to come around and take a pull. I was hesitant to ride too hard, knowing that I could not match KK’s fitness, and he could easily attack me and create a gap off of my hard work.  It really didn’t matter, as we noticed that the field reacted immediately to our 2 person breakaway and was already closing the gap after 1 lap.

After I was engulfed by the peloton, Eric Attayi (teammate) tried his luck at a breakaway with 3-4 other riders following.  Good riders from some of the bigger teams (including Bike Barn) were represented, and the pace of the peloton slowed for a bit to see how the breakaway would fare.  Kevin Kremke was near the front with a few other Bike Barn teammates, and was matching every acceleration by riders from other teams that didn’t make the break, most notably a guy from Austinbikes, and Pincus, riding for MetroVW.  Occasionally riders would attack hard and bridge, swelling the breakaway to 8 riders.

The breakaway had 25 seconds on the main field, with Kevin daring anyone to try and attack, matching most of the moves.  Davis and I covered a couple of moves, trying to help block for Eric as much as possible.

At a little more than halfway through the 60 minute crit, they called a field prime. I was on the front for the prime lap, knowing that all hell would break loose AFTER the prime had been won.  Sure enough, following the wave of sprinters going for a six-pack of beer, Kevin attacked hard to create some separation from the peloton.  You could tell he was motivated to bridge to the break, but did not want to pull the peloton up to the break, effectively catching some of his teammates.  The irony of this is it seemed that some of his teammates from the peloton were actually chasing him down in his attempts to bridge.  (Possibly inadvertently or not at all, seeing as I could always be wrong from lack of oxygen to the brain)  The next 20 minutes involved Kevin attacking hard to try and get a gap, but nothing would stick.  All this time, I was marking his every move, leaving me with tired legs and burning lungs.

With 3 laps to go and the break still 20 seconds up the road, my job was done!  Eric ended up 2^nd, a great result for him!  He is definitely on his game and you can tell he will be a force to be reckoned with for the summer crit series.  I think Team Shama helped him as much as we could, and it was great to see everyone working together for a win! I sat in for the win.  We ended up with free beer for our efforts.  Congrats to Wally Groda from Bike Barn on the win (bridged up with 4 laps to go, then attacked out of the break for the win).  Chris Lowry of Velossimo was third.