Tues. I tried my first real bike crit. For those of you who don't know what a crit is, it is riding and drafting in a large group of cyclists. It can be very dangerous and crits are famous for crashes. This is the reason why I had never tried one before. I had been warned against it and always told that there was too much risk. I've done draft riding within a triathlon but it's been smaller groups and unfortunately a lot of elite triathletes do not have very good technical bike skills.
So I was unsure what to expect but in the end I am so glad I did it. Within the hour I learned a lot. I started off fairly cautious and a little unsure. I very quickly realized that in order to survive in the pack above all you needed CONFIDENCE. There was no time to doubt, hesitate or change your mind going threw the turns otherwise you risked crashing or losing the pack. Both very undesirable consequences. I learned to trust myself and was also forced to trust others while always being on the lookout.
Along with confidence the other quality I tapped into was POWER. And I don't just mean cycling power although that's a given. This is what I mean. In the past in many different situations I have tended to give my power away. Whether it was being too nice, or letting someone go in front of me, or allowing someone to take my power away in a relationship by not standing up for myself. All of us have given our power away in an unhealthy way at times, some of us more than others. Anyway, the first couple of turns I was really cautious. I wouldn't use all my power, mostly out of fear; so then I would have to sprint to catch the group off the corners. After doing this a few times I built up the confidence to just go for it threw the corners and not break. By doing this I stayed in the pack and didn't give any of my power away and didn't have to waste time and energy catching up after. I thought this was a great analogy of what so many of us do in life. Instead of just using our power, we give too much of it away and often feel drained or burnt out and then need time to recover. "Keep your Power" became a mantra of mine throughout the whole crit and it payed off.
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ah, I really like this analogy too! This pretty much sums up life and the fight for survival. You stay with the pack, feeding off their energy--literally--to preserve your own. Because alone, it is so much harder to make it at the end. As well as maintaining confidence, as you say, and not giving up "power" in the control sense (though it is also energy you are giving: slow down on corners and you are wasting energy; let someone draft you, lead the group, and they are taking your energy, letting you do the work), it also takes a kind of cooperation to stay in a group like this, because, as you say, it can be dangerous--if someone takes too big a risk, or makes the wrong move, you could all fall down. So you use the group, this symbiosis of energy exchange, to get to the end. You use the group for yourself. Then when you get to the end, you pull ahead with the energy you still have left and win the race because you are in it for yourself and no one else.
I've never really watched a bike race closely, but I imagine that the draft leaders rotate every so often, as like a flock of geese. Wouldn't it be to everyone in the group's advantage if the leaders were to rotate, thus preserving the entire group's energy? Is this how people from same team race in competitions, sling-shotting each other around repeatedly?
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