Notre Dame Criterium

After Saturday's race we made the trek northward to South Bend for the criterium that would be held at Notre Dame on Sunday. The crit would also be the final collegiate race of the season as Wisconsin's race weekend had to be cancelled due to some course conflicts.

It was nice to get to the hotel early enough to have time to just hang out and make a run to the holy grail of the south that is Chick-Fil-A. With our stomach's full of chicken sammich and waffle fries we got to bed early.

Notre Dame's course was pretty cool since it was located in a down-town-ish area of South Bend. Other than that there was nothing spectacular about it. The road wasn't exactly smooth, there were some awkwardly placed manhole covers in the turns, and I'm just not a big fan of South Bend. One great thing about it though was the presence of cafes right along the course. A gps overlay of the course, courtesy of Zack's Strava account, can be seen below. We headed counter clockwise around the route, so we made all left turns.

As far as races go this one was pretty uneventful. No breakaways ever had much of a chance of succeeding. Some guys sprinted for the primes (and celebrated gaudily after taking them), but that was about all of the excitement that the race had. Well, I guess the general sketchyness of some of the riders should be noted. I'd say I witnessed more squirelly riding in this race than any other race this year, even the D's, but no one crashed so yay go us for keeping it on 2 wheels the whole time.

I spent the majority of the race just sitting in and letting everyone pull me around the course. I was content to let this go on until a few laps left when I needed to start moving forward if I was going to have any chance at contesting for the sprint finish.

Just sittin' on Zack's wheel. Photo by David Villegas

Eventually the last lap came and everyone tried making moves in the section going southbound. This caused for a hairy couple of turns at the bottom of the course before heading back north for the final sprint. I ended up being a little too far back when we came out of the last turn so my chances at winning the sprint were done. I did what I could in the final sprint and ended up crossing the line in 7th. Results of the top 25 shown below:

After the race we hit up a cafe for some hot dogs, orange soda, and copious amounts of Jelly Belly's. It was nice to be able to sit inside out of the wind and cold air while watching the rest of the day's races.

All in all it was a pretty solid weekend of racing. It's sad that my first collegiate racing season came to an end so quickly. In hindsight I'm quite pleased with the way that it turned out. Going into the season with absolutely no race experience I had no idea what to expect. However, it ended up being everything I could hope for and more. I won my 3rd race ever at DePauw, achieved my goal of upgrading to C's, and finished the year with 4 straight top 10 finishes in C's.

The good news is that the season is really just beginning and now its time to move onto the USAC racing that the summer will bring.