How To Race a Crit: Tips for Beginners

Pro/1/2/3 field stretches out behind National Champion Ty Magner at the Long Run Park race in 2019.

As we approach raceday at Long Run Park, it’s important to be prepared for the raceday experience!

Here are a few tips to prepare for raceday so you feel good, perform your best, and come away with a positive experience.

How the Race Unfolds

Criterium racing can be serious fun because it is a high-speed, high-stakes chess match. Fitness doesn’t often trump tactics, but in order to be able to play the game you have to be fit, know your equipment, and be comfortable with the risk involved.

The Start— When the whistle blows, clip in quickly. There is often a hot start where riders will jockey into position. This matters because the closer you are to the front the less likely you are to get caught behind a crash, a slower rider, or any other mishap that is out of your control.

Corners— When you approach turns, you must be comfortable cornering at high speed. If you are not comfortable cornering, you will lose speed, take a bad line, and you’ll have to sprint to catch up and make up for the lack of confidence in the turn. Ouch! Trust your skills, trust your tires, trust the riders around you, and never give up on the corner— scan your line for gravel or obstacles to ensure it’s safe, pick your exit, and nail it!

The Crux— Generally the first third of the race and the last few laps are the fastest and hardest. Early on, the most confident riders will try to break away or just set a hard pace to test the field and their chances of winning. The motivated field will stretch out and those who corner gingerly and are caught in bad positioning will pay the price by chasing hard. Survive this and you’ve got what it takes to go the distance.

The Win— Often Cat 4/5 races come down to a bunch sprint or end with a solo breakaway winner. Team tactics don’t usually play out for a large number of reasons, including fitness, team dynamics, race craft, and cohesion so be ready to control your own destiny in the last few laps. Rarely do last-lap solo attempts work, but if you find yourself thinking you can’t beat the group in a sprint, it’s your last opportunity. The final sprint is often mostly decided before the final corner, so you’ll likely have to work for it throughout the final lap, not just the final 200 meters. If you win, punch the air with one hand— crashing because of a full post-up is mortifying and expensive.

Know your Skillset & Fitness

Knowing where your skillset lies is key to making an accurate assessment of how the course suits your power profile, how you’ll have to navigate the race-pace, and your overall outlook on the experience after it’s over.

If you’re good at holding a steady power for a long time, a steady race-day effort will be the least taxing for you. This will mean you will have to be rock solid through corners for efficiency, be willing to overlook the random lulls in the pace to move up through the peloton, and will likely have to look for a breakaway opportunity to increase your chances of winning.

If you’re a good sprinter and accelerate well, you might have an upper hand in the final sprint, but endurance will ensure you can get to the end. You should be good in corners so you don’t burn your precious sprint-winning matches prematurely, and be ready to hold onto the group during the long efforts that often come in criterium racing.

Set a Goal

Is it your first race? How long have you been riding for? What types of rides do you do? Everything is relative in cycling, so you can determine your own success.

Extrinsic goals like winning the race are dependent on a lot of chance, like good winds, no mechanicals, and good tactics, etc.

You should always have intrinsic goals that you can measure yourself up against and avoid burnout caused by extrinsic goals. Sometimes intrinsic goals can be as simple as riding as hard as you can for as log as you can. If you’re satisfied with that effort no matter the placement, you’ll have a great time.

Other goals could include avoiding mechanicals, improving cornering ability, reading the race, trying to break away, riding hard at the front, or just talking trash to your best friend in the field.

Nutrition & Prep

Normally beginner crits are about 30 minutes long. This means your body won’t need a lot of food or water because it will rely on stored muscle glycogen. For this reason, most of your nutrition prep will have to happen 2 days ahead of time.

If the race is on Saturday, think of 5 important meals: Thursday Breakfast & Lunch, Friday Breakfast & Lunch, and the Raceday Breakfast. Crits can be very anaerobic, so carbohydrates from rice, pasta, and potatoes are great choices.

Your morning breakfast should be high in carbohydrate as well and ideally about 4 hours before the race— this allows your gut to settle and insulin levels to stabilize. Consume a gel or just some candy within 30 minutes before your race and you’ll top off your energy reserves for your crit.

The other aspect is your bike. Clean it! Degrease and lube you chain to avoid friction losses, determine your tire pressure, and make sure your gears are prepared. To avoid stress, do your more serious mechanical checks the week before the race, and just clean the bike before the race.

Tapering: If you’ve trained a lot and have ample base fitness, a taper could help you catch up on nutrition and recovery to perform your best. Generally you’ll want to maintain intensity to avoid the legs going flat, but you’ll cut back on volume. The day or two before the race, you’ll want to reactivate them by “running through the zones”— a few minutes in Tempo, Threshold, and maybe one high cadence effort will be enough to oxygenate the legs, and encourage nutrient uptake in your muscles.

Create a Race-Day Gameplan

Always plan to arrive at the race venue with enough time to visit and chat with your friends, check in see where the medical tent is, pin your number, and warm up. This amount varies from person to person, but plan for at least 2 hours so you’re not rushed. If you bring your trainer or rollers to the venue, aim to warm up under some shade to avoid unnecessary dehydration and exposure.

Depending on your fitness level, you’ll want to either roll easily for a few minutes and save it all for the race, or you’ll want to do a shortened version of the openers you did the few days before.

Be prepared for after the race— have your recovery mix or meal prepped for a quick arrival and consumption when you return.

Arrive at the start line early! Crits usually have no seeding order, so the earlier you’re there, the better start spot you’ll have.

If you won, be ready for podium announcements.

Get changed into your clean clothes and head down to the racecourse to cheer on the other racers! This will be a social opportunity for you to bask in your effort and also see other racers in action as inspiration. What we see on TV feels remote and far away, but the race you just did is real and similar to everything the pros had to do to get there.

Evaluate

Was it fun? What went well? What could have been better? A positive mindset will let you count the experience as a deposit so you can be more prepared for the next race. If you had a rough go, look for other positives in the experience. Bike racing is cool, and bike races are becoming a rare breed. Bask in the effort of the organizers and volunteers to help bring you the experience and look for ways to provide constructive feedback.

Racing can be as easy, stressful, serious, or relaxed as you make it out to be. Just remember that at the end of the day it’s just a fun thing to do that brings us all closer together.

Now go out there and ride fast!