OKC Pro-Am Classic Criterium

 The weekend started off with the much anticipated OKC Pro-Am Classic. This was definitely a high priority race when I made up my race calender at the beginning of the year. This was the first year for this event, and I really hope it grows and keeps happening every year for a long time because it's a really cool race. The area in Downtown OKC is unique in itself. There's a lot of history on Broadway Ave. - AKA "Automotive Alley". as it's one of the oldest streets in the city. The Midtown area is pretty sweet also. The whole area seems to be growing rapidly with new businesses and loft apartments being added every month it seems.

The DNA guys did a TON of work to make the weekend happen, and I would say they went above and beyond what could have been expected for a first year high caliber event, I thought it was great.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous going into this race. Every day, I ride part of the course on my way to work as it's on my commute route. Ever since I knew about the race and course layout, it was fun to hit that 10th street to Broadway corner really fast and pretend it was the finish, so it was nice knowing extra details about the course. I guess the nerve wracking part was the fact there were so many people I knew at the race. Friends, family, co-workers and such. Once we got racing it was no big deal.

My buddy Judson Copeland took these sweet photos

I would guess there were around 40 cat 2's that started the race. I'm not sure why, but it seemed really hard to find a sweet spot out of the wind. Maybe the way the wind was swirling around the buildings in the area? I don't know, but I do know it strung the field out a lot and the attrition rate was pretty high as a lot of guys got pulled or just quit.

The race was 75 minutes long, so I really wanted to be conservative the first 45 minutes or so. It was pretty tough because the race was pretty active with lots of attacks. I thought the race would probably stay together since the roads were so wide, but that wasn't the case. A group of 2 guys took off very early in the race. I tried to get into a couple of moves that didn't go anywhere. I did get a prime somewhere around the midway point. It felt pretty easy to make passes when you needed to.

Going for a $50 prime

Anyway, I missed the winning move that went pretty late in the race. A group of 4 guys got away, and bridged up to the other 2 guys. Once the field sat up with 2 laps to go, I knew the best there was to get at that point was 7th, well, I didn't know the exact number of guys up the road, but I knew it was at least 5.
The last lap was pretty chaotic. I started pretty far back, so I was in a little bit of panic mode. I was passing guys pretty aggressively. The furthest SW corner of the course was a downhill high speed tailwind white knuckler. I got a really good run coming out of it, passed a few guys, and carried it through to the next corner. I kind of took an outside-in line, and was weaving through traffic making more passes. This is when the biggest bummer of the race happened. My team mate Rob had his go pro camera on, and it looks like as I was coming through, another team mate of mine moved left, which caused me to move left as I was passing Rob and my buddy Andy. I felt my hip kind of clip Andy's bars, and I guess it either got him off balance and he overlapped his front wheel over my back wheel, or I may have just chopped him altogether. I'm not really sure because it happened so fast. Either way, Andy went down pretty hard. It definitely wasn't intentional, and I still feel pretty horrible about it.

I ended up passing a couple more guys, and was sitting about 6th in the field coming into the last corner. I passed everybody and was closing on the last guy, but I just ran out of road and he got me by a few inches, so an 8th place for the day.

This is the entire race as seen from Rob Bell's handlebars. I'm pretty easy to spot with my yellow shoes.

The following day was the King of Moore criterium. I guess it went slightly better. I'll do that race report very soon.