Houston Grand Crit Racing - PIP

[katinthehat]

So yesterday for Mother's Day I requested we walk the whole mile from our house to downtown to watch the Houston Grand Crit.  Outside of track racing, this was the first bike race I've ever seen.  I may be many things, but crazy enough to race a crit is not one of them!

(A crit race is ridden on road bikes but it's a short course, usually less than a mile, with the goal at this race being to ride as many laps as possible in a time frame, 40 minutes to 60 minutes generally. Sometimes crits are to race XX amount of laps but I think generally they're more timed.) 

Because they're shorter than road races, they're generally faster and a lot more intense.  The other thing that makes crits super fun (and we have these in track races too) are the "primes" (pronounced preems) where if you cross the finish line first on that particular lap, you win a prize.  Sometimes it's something like a box of energy gels but yesterday, for the pro categories, there were several $1000 prime laps.  So there can be little races within the bigger race if someone wants a prize badly enough.

Anyway, it was super, super, super fun to watch because at our point, we got to see the racers twice on each lap and given that they were doing the laps in like 3 or 4 minutes, that's a lot of spectating.  I think the coolest thing for me though was that when you watch big cycling races you hear about the lead group having a gap of xx amount of time on the pelaton and sometimes the break gets away and sometimes it doesn't, etc and it's kind of hard to get exactly what that means.  Yesterday in the men's p/1/2 category, some of the guys with about 10 minute left got a breakway of two or three riders and at one point had a 22 second gap on the bunch.  First, 22 seconds looked forever long, a lot longer than you would think!  And then, the break was caught on the last half of the last lap.  It was just really neat to see every time they came by on the last few laps how the gap got smaller and smaller and smaller till it was just gone.

The Houston race is a small time crit compared to some of the really big ones like in Athens and Red Hook in New York, etc.  We got there to watch three races, the end of the masters 35+ cat 3/4, the women's P/1/2 and the men's P/1/2.  The difference in speed and bike handling and riding ability between the masters and the p/1/2 was huge - I can only imagine how intense watching a really big, national race would be.

Enough jabbering except to say, if you have the chance, go watch a crit!  It's incredibly spectator friendly and a really fun way to get introduced to bike racing.  Plus, they're insane.

Oh, and one more cool thing.  The girl who won the women's race cooled down for one lap than took the start line with the men's P/1/2.  That's so badass.



That's the men's P/1/2 taking the tight corner on the course




With two to go, the gap was at 25 seconds



The finish of the p/1/2 race


A few pictures










And a gratuitous Mother's Day shot of the 2.5 monkeys and me

[perkyderky]

Yes, Crits were/are, by FAR, my most favorite kind of race, to both race and spectate--glad you enjoyed the experience as well! The US Nationals were in a neighboring city last year and will be back again this year--I'm excited to spectate again. The women's race is always so inspiring to me--those ladies are generally so kind and enthusiastic for the sport, it always makes me a little annoyed that their "big" primes are like $500, whereas the men's are $1,000+ sometimes.

[sadlebred]

I love watching crits but hate racing them! I have done dozens but "retired" from crit racing about 5 years ago.

If you can ever get to Athens Twilight in Athens, GA, it is amazing. 30,000 people watching a bike race with drinks, food, music, restaurants...it's one of the best races in the country. I didn't go this year (I go about every other year), but it's one of my favorite races to watch and photograph.

[marcyiam]

That sounds awesome!

[katinthehat]

May 12, 2014 10:12:22 GMT -5 perkyderky said:

Yes, Crits were/are, by FAR, my most favorite kind of race, to both race and spectate--glad you enjoyed the experience as well! The US Nationals were in a neighboring city last year and will be back again this year--I'm excited to spectate again. The women's race is always so inspiring to me--those ladies are generally so kind and enthusiastic for the sport, it always makes me a little annoyed that their "big" primes are like $500, whereas the men's are $1,000+ sometimes.

I was happy to see both the p/1/2 for men and women had $1000 primes, so those were equal (although I don't think payouts were)