It all started at about noon as I was biking back home after having bought some bike parts. I noticed the streets around Parc Laurier were all blocked off and remembered Colin telling me he was racing a criterium there. I called him up, took care of a few mechanical issues and less than two hours later I was signed up to race!
For those of you who may not know, a criterium is a road bike race over a circuit generally less than 2km in length. In this case the course made a tight loop around the park, going up Brébeuf, west on St-Grégoire, down Mentana, east on Laurier and back up again.
I have to say I wasn't very well prepared psychologically, this being so last-minute and having never done a sanctioned road race before. I spent my time before the race pacing, laughing a lot and drinking too much water. Here I am at the start:
My group was composed of Cat 3 seniors, which I registered as, and Junior Cat 2, who were faster. The warm up lap felt good but my foot slipped on the start and I almost fell.
The first few laps were brutal. Maybe I just wasn't warmed up yet but the first few laps felt like a sprint. At one point, my computer revealed I was going 48 on a slight uphill. I felt I was doing pretty good, as I slowly climbed up the echelon. I was nowhere near the leaders who were pulling away but in a pretty good spot nonetheless I thought.
My group was going a bit slow for my tastes, but then again, I probably wasn't pulling as much as they would have like me to either. At one point we got lapped by two breakaway riders, which I thought was a great opportunity to gain some ground on the peloton up ahead. Apparently, I was the only one since after sprinting up to get on and keep these guys' wheels, I turned around to see the 6 or so racers I was riding with, almost a quarter lap behind me. I turned down the pace for a bit and let them sweep me up.
I stayed with this group for awhile until the main peloton caught up to us. This made things a lot easier. Our merged group was now about twenty riders strong and traveling quite a bit faster than we had been before. All I had to do now was find a comfy spot in the pack and try not to work too hard for the remaining ten or so minutes before the final sprint.
Just when all seemed to be going well,(ok, except for the fact that I was a lap behind the people I was riding with) my bike started emitting a high pitch whistling sound as I got out of a turn. At least I thought it was my bike, but it's kind of hard to tell when you're in the middle of such a large group. It's hard to put your head down to check things out too. I realized that it was in fact my bike making the noise, and that my back wheel had slipped in the dropout as I accelerated after the turn and was now rubbing against my chainstay. I pulled over to correct the issue but by the time I did, it was too late. The peloton was no longer catch-up-able and there was no trailing group to pick me up. If I wanted to finish this thing, I was going to have to ride the few remaining laps solo.
I was already pretty beat so I figured I'd save myself the effort. My race ended right there.