Tour de Gastown

Another day another crit. In the last week this was my third crit, three times as many crits as I had done all year previously.
Gastown is just one of those races you have to do if you go to Superweek even though I didnt really have a hope of a result as this is about as pure crit as it gets. The course runs on a pie shaped form with a tight corner at the top making the point of the pieslice and a couple of slightly off camber flagestone corners at the bottom. The finishing straight is a slight uphill with a headwind making for singlefile racing.
Nick and I headed into downtown Vancouver early and set up camp in a parking stall at an underground parking facility just off the strip. After a quick warmup spin around Stanley Park we hit up the race grounds and started to make our way through the thousands of spectators already taking in the womens race to find the start. Gastown as all crits is all about the start.With well over 100 riders it was very important to be at the front so we lined up early and got the first row. Once start time was almost upon us the organizer was getting stressed about having enough room for a call up of the best riders so they sent us for a lap around the course to move the field back a few meters. As it turns out only about 1/4 of the field actually took the lap meaning that once we came around to the start line again we were in the last couple of rows. I was not at all happy with this turn of events, but there was nothing to do but try to move up once the gun went. Moving up at Gastown like trying to get through Heathrow in a hurry, it took a solid 15 laps to get anywhere near the front of the race. 35 laps later I had seen the top ten once and ended up in the 40th positions somewhere. Considering my start I was reasonably happy with the outcome of Canadas premier crit.
Now we are looking forward to Altoona and the Tour de Toona which starts on Monday. Health Net, Jittery Joes, Navigators and Symmetrics were all at Superweek at some point so it has been a good warmup to what is no doubt going to be some fast racing in Pennsylvania.

If you look closely you can see me just exiting the corner on the far right...