For as much as I train, eat and race as skinny climber – deep down inside I may bear the soul of a fat, angry crit sprinter. I know that when the shit-hits-the-fan, I can surprise other racers (myself included) with a blazing sprint. When I saw the layout of the Stage 4's Downtown criterium, I knew I could do well. It featured about 80 feet of climbing per lap with four 90 degree corners and a high speed downhill. Sitting at 48th on the GC, I had absolutely nothing to lose and was determined to go balls-to-the-wall all day.
So of course I woke up this morning feeling more tired than I have all week. I did not want to get out of bed today, my legs hurt, my stomach hurt and I was suddenly unmotivated to do anything. But I got up anyway, hoping I would feel better as the morning went on.
We arrived at the course in downtown Silver City with about an hour to warmup. After setting up our trainers and suiting up, Nate discovered that his bike wouldn't shift – at all. His derailleur was fixed in his 50x11, and the shifter was doing nothing but creating slack in the cable. We went into panic-mode as we frantically tried to fix his bike. We both needed to warmup, but getting Nate into the crit on a working bike to preserve his GC placing was more important.
It has taken me years of racing to be able do my entire pre-race preparation with complete calm and relaxation. The more stressful you make your pre-race warmup, including suiting up, filling water bottles, lubing chain, pumping tires etc – the more energy you will drain from your body prior to the race. I have a specific order in which I do everything from putting my shoes on, to oiling my legs, even always putting my helmet in a specific place near my trainer. So when something unexpectedly catastrophic happens, like a bike breaking – I go fucking insane.
After checking shifters, derailleur and cables we figured out that something in the derailleur was seized. We sprayed the entire body down with lube, wrenched on it a bunch of times and finally it started to move freely. After another cable adjustment it was shifting like new again. We now had about 20 minutes to warmup, normally I need about 40 before a hard crit. With Allie pinning our numbers we did our half-ass warmup and flew off to the course.
On lap 2 I tore off the front to chase down a $40 prime, and allowed another rider to out sprint me. I was afraid that if I did a full-bore sprint I would blow myself up and get left behind by the pack. A few laps later I went off the front again with the same rider, and once again let him take the prime. This continued for the next 12 laps as I kept leaping off the front into breakaways with other riders. Unfortunately nothing stuck and no primes were won, but all that attacking allowed me to get a good feel for how fast and for how long I could hold solo speed on the circuit.
For the last 4 laps I sat in and found Nate at the front of the pack. I asked him to lead me out on the final lap. I sat right on his wheel for the next 3 laps. On the final lap someone tried to take his wheel from me and I had to shove the guy off and yell, "That's my fucking wheel!" He was forced to go around Nate and take a pull at the front of the peleton, which took us all the way up the hill into the 3rd corner. At that point a huge crash occurred right behind us and I screamed out to Nate, "Go, Fucking Go Now!" And he did! Nate charged super hard through corners 3 and 4. Lining the final straightaway into the finish line were reflective shop windows and I could use those to see we had a 10 foot gap on the group. I was screaming at Nate like a drill sergeant to keep going. 200 meters from the line, I saw the rider behind us through the shop windows start his sprint. So I got out of the saddle and wound it up around Nate to roll in for the win, with Nate coming in right behind me for second.
"Nick Schaffner from Truckee California – 1st place," screamed the announcer over the loudspeaker.
It couldn't have been a more perfect win, combined with Nate coming in second. We do nothing but train for stage racing, climbing and time trialing all year long, and our biggest results of the season come out of a criterium.
