A Campaign for Common Sense: Race Report: Tunis Roubaix Crit

This weekend marked the beginning of the racing season for the SCCCCCCCCCC... (South Central Collegiate Cycling Conference) with the annual Tunis-Roubaix road race hosted by the A&M Cycling Team. I was busy on Saturday trying to get a job and was unable to participate in the road race, which I am still not sure if that is a good thing or not (kinda leaning towards yes, it is a good thing). From what I heard, it was a pretty rough race, and the course was intense with baseball-size rocks on the dirt section. Yeah, kinda glad I had to miss that. This year, for the first time, A&M also decided to add a collegiate only crit on Sunday and I was able to partake in that.

My race was at 9 am, and being more of a night person than morning person (though that is changing...) I drove out to College Station Saturday night and crashed at a friend's place instead of getting up at the ass crack of dawn after losing an hour to Daylight Savings Time to drive out there the morning of. Turns out my clock automatically adjusts the time for DST, but for some reason, it also adds an hour to the time you set for your alarm... so I ended up waking up an hour late... Good thing I was only 20 minutes away from the race instead of 2 hours!

The race was held at the Brazos County Expo Center (fancy name for a small convention center and some sort of livestock/equestrian arena, it is A&M after all...) which proved to be a nice spot for a crit, save some dirt on the roads. The course was flat and well-paved, with plenty of corners, and a whole lot of fun.

Lining up for the start, I had not had much of a warm-up and I had to pee, so I was not feeling too confident about the race. I decided to try to look as pro as possible and ditch one of my bottles at the start line up (more like I realized everyone else had only one bottle and I would not need more than one) apparently breaking Jacob's collarbone in the process. Good thing it didn't keep him from doing well in his race. And we were off.

Long story short, I was dumb and stayed at the back of what I would hesitate to call a pack, and it seemed that every time I got on someone's wheel, they would slow down, and I would have to hit it to get around them and keep with the front group, wasting energy. Also, on multiple occasions, after I had already picked my line into a corner, some idiot who did not know how to corner would cut me off on the inside and then come out wide, causing me to have to avoid them. Aye. Slowly, I just began riding off the back for a few laps until I just couldn't keep up with them.

Coming around the chicane, when I was still with somewhat of a group, photo from davidriggs.com

I thought about pulling myself from the race, but reminded myself it was only 30 minutes and wanted to finish unless they made me drop out. I was able to stay in for the entire race and ended up finishing 16th out of 30 some people, which is better than I thought, just because they pulled so many people and the field shrank really quickly. Had I been smarter about it though, I could have done much better. Ah well, you live and learn. At least now I have actually finished a race! For some reason, I think people think I have more racing experience than I actually have. While I hate to do it, I'm going to burst the bubble: This was my third race, and my first two were both DNFs in similar fashion. At least now I have a finish!

Josh ended up getting 3rd, and we had 2 other top 10 finishes, I belive, including Ben and Joey.

Another view of the chicane, with Joey in the lead. Photo from davidriggs.com

I had planned on leaving after my race, but decided to stick around to watch as the course seemed like it would be fun to watch, and to spend some time with my teammates. The Men's B and A race were both stacked by MSU, but we still managed to do pretty well in each, considering the circumstances. One MSU guy tore up the B race by breaking away pretty early and staying there, with the help of two or three teammates in the pack just sitting on the front and preventing a chase. Caputo managed to snag 5th though, I believe. We did not have any women in the Women's B race, and there were only three in the A race which was taken by an A&M girl who managed a breakaway, leaving Brenna with an MSU girl who refused to work with her. In the Men's A race, there was a break of four- 2 MSU riders, Jordan for UT, and one A&M rider. They eventually caught up to the main pack, causing things to get a little chaotic, aided apparently by a crash by Michael, and the end result was MSU taking first with Jordan in second, which was awesome! For Kyle and Sean it was their first and second, respectively time to race As, and they did an awesome job! All in all, it was a good day of racing, and fun to watch (save all the mullets).

By the way, I would caution you not to mess with Michael: