#16 PURE Austin Fitness Driveway Series: Race Report

The Driveway promotional poster.

Hello everyone,

This is a race report of my first participation in this year’s Driveway Series, a series of weekly criteriums that last from daylight savings time to fall back weekend. I’ll probably keep this short because the race was only 30 minutes. Anyways, a little info on the Driveway. It’s basically a race held on an auto-racing course, except on Thursday evenings they lend it to the PURE Fitness people for bike races. The races are mainly used for training and gaining experience, but it’s icing on the cake if you win. The competition for the series overall title is based on a points system, in which points are awarded to the top finishers, with more points going to the higher finishers.

I decided to take part in the 4/5 race which contained new people like me, as well as the more experienced Category 4 people. Category 4 means you’ve participated in at least 10 races, but most people don’t move up from Category 5 unless they’ve finished well in the lower races. The location of the race had me confused for a while, because you have to exit the highway on a narrow street that had no indicator sign for when it was approaching. Thus, I missed my exit and continued for another 10 minutes are so until I realized I was lost, so it took me a while to find the course.

Unfortunately, after registration there was no time for me to warm up. I was a little annoyed, but it was my fault for missing the exit and there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. When they called our group to go up, I looked around and saw Robbie, along with a few other Texas cyclists with whom I’m not well acquainted. The race wasn’t too fast to begin with, but it was pretty intense. In my field there were 75 riders, definitely the largest pack I have ever raced in. This was the smallest field of the day, too! When we hit the first corner, Robbie had someone cut in front of him and he had to swerve as well, and someone yelled at him to hold the line, although there was nothing he could do. The first few turns were pretty scary for me as I have never cornered at such a high speed before (22-24mph). I told myself, however, that I would have to learn how to corner well eventually and it’s a noted weakness of my previous races, so I decided to trust my gut and just do exactly what the person in front of me was doing.

I tried to follow traditional turning guidelines, such as putting my inside pedal up, leaning my bike, and leaning my body in the other direction. It turns out it worked! I was able to corner much more smoothly than in the previous races, though I still need to improve. The bike can lean over a lot more than one would expect…it feels like you’re going to tip over!

After the first lap someone crashed and there was some panic in the field. People were braking, swerving left and right, and I just tried to find a clear line through the chaos. I was able to stay upright, thankfully, and I continued on. Unfortunately, the crash caused a split in the field and it took me a lot of effort to stay on…that’s why you have to stay in the front, I guess. I was able to hang on for another lap, but when the third lap came around I was getting pretty tired. It was going to be a very hard 30 minutes, and I had never done a crit that long before.

People were starting to fall off the back as the race increased in intensity. After I blew up, I tried to keep a reasonable pace and wait for some people behind me to pick me up so we could work together. Eventually three guys caught up to me, and I was able to latch on. We formed a paceline, though I didn’t contribute very much since my legs were burning. The people watching cheered and told us to work together. One by one, we picked up stragglers from the field and we had a pretty good paceline going. Some people decided to hang on to us, while others couldn’t hold the pace and dropped back. It was very exciting.

After about 25 minutes, the lead group lapped us. It was pretty chaotic as they tried to pass us. One of the guys in our paceline tried to catch back on to the group, which pretty much broke apart our paceline. I’m not even sure if such a move was legal in this race, because in the other criteriums I participated in, this was not allowed.

I think by this point the race was pretty much decided as they only count the top 20 finishes, and so the directors pretty much told everyone to vacate the course. I met up with Robbie afterward, he told me that his bike had leaned over so much that his pedal hit the ground while in the up position. That’s pretty far. Unfortunately, his pedal ran into his back tire and knocked the bead off the rim, which made it unrepairable. So, he asked me for a ride back and I agreed to take him.

I wanted to watch the other race, the pro/1/2/3 race which contained some professional riders, as well as good amateurs. Anyways, it was a weekday and I pretty much need to get back to town, so we decided to leave. I think overall, the race went better than the last few criteriums I’ve participated in, even though I didn’t hang on to the pack as long. The main improvements were in cornering, and the fact that I didn’t finish alone. I think there were plenty of people behind me, but I wasn’t really sure because by the time the race finished, the scene was pretty chaotic and you couldn’t really tell who lapped whom, and so on. That’s why the race officials only count the first 20 riders. I still have to work on sustaining a high power output for an extended period of time, but it’s improving. This race was much more intense than the collegiate races I’ve participated in, and I clocked in an average of 21mph, which was 4mph more than the first criterium I participated in, so it’s a good sign.