Because six days of racing wasn’t going to be enough… No that’s not it… Because I’m easily persuaded… Perhaps… Because a criterium sounded like it might be fun and I haven’t ridden one for ages… Possibly…
Just because…
Anyway, we are back in Kaernten for the Tour de Kaernten starting tomorrow. We are camping at our normal spot at the Ossiacher See. Yesterday we did a tiny bit of sport climbing near the Slovenian border and this morning we did a fun via ferrata route back in the same area.
Around 8 pm I rode the Feldkirchen Altstadt criterium in… yes… the old town of Feldkirchen. It was suprisingly quite fun. I got lapped at the end of the 10th lap so didn’t finish but so did a bunch of people. The course consisted of 1 km laps and there were 15 of them. At least there would have been 15 of them had I rode faster.
Still, it was quite nice flying through the old town. There was a descent from the start line, some corners, a flat bit, and then an ascent on cobble stones, a few more corners and the line again. Repeat x 15. Unless you get lapped in which case it’s game over.
Now come the excuses. I wanted to film the race so was faffing with my go pro when the race started as the nasty thing wouldn’t switch. This put me in a bad place by half way through the first lap until I got the thing started. I didn’t really get back on to a wheel from the first guys. Funny though, my mouth went completely dry and my heart went from 110 to 195ish in no time.
Another guy sat on my wheel for a while but when someone passed us he jumped on the other wheel and I rode alone until getting lapped. This didn’t really help my average speed which ended up at 35 km/h. Not bad I suppose since I didn’t have a bunch but not really comparably to the first stage of the tour de vineyards in 2005 where I had an average speed of 42.1 km/h after 60km, although with bunch support and no nasty corners where you had to brake hard. This criterium had one just before the cobblestones which required a bit of braking.
Anyway, quite fun. Perhaps I should do some more.
Above: Apparently I was working hard. Must be one of the shortest races I’ve ever done…