BTR Crit, named for WMU’s Business, Technology, & Research Park, is one of the best crit venues in Michigan racing. It has always been plagued by low racer attendance for some reason, but turnout improved this year, probably as a result of moving the date from early August to early July.

Based on the short 50-minute drive from Grand Rapids, and the reasonable afternoon start times for Cat. 3, I was in a great mood to race.

For the Cat. 3 race, it was just Peter and I, as other eligible teammates were racing either masters or busy for the day. We got a solid warmup on the rural roads near the course, noticing the wind was pushing pretty hard out of the west, straight across US-131 onto the course. This is a common occurence at BTR.

Even though the car temp. gauge read mid-70’s throughout the day, it felt MUCH hotter while racing. Our plan was to cover attacks by other riders, and try to get in a move if something looked good. Given the apathetic racing throughout much of Michigan Cat. 3 racing this year, it’s usually a pretty good bet for a high finish.

Starting out, Peter covered the first acceleration or two, while I covered the next few. After sitting near the front for the first 10-15 minutes, I drifted back in the field to rest a bit – and sure enough the pack strung out due to some hard pace setting. After struggling briefly to hold wheels into the wind, things calmed down again, and everyone recovered a bit.

About 35 minutes into the 65-minute race, a Wolverine rider took a long steady pull into the head/crosswind with me sitting 2nd or 3rd wheel. As soon as we hit the little overpass right before the finishline, I accelerated hard with a high cadence, but not a full-out attack. I looked back and found myself separated from the pack, and happily noticed another racer – John Meyers – up the road. It was a great coincidence that he was there, because I had no idea anyone was ahead when I accelerated.

John soon noticed me closing in on him and sat up a bit to wait for my company. We kept our two-man break rolling along smoothly – I was encouraged by the fact that we were occasionally out of sight of the pack as we worked hard into the wind. Although I did about 2/3rds of work in the break, much of that was on the very fast (and easy) tailwind stretch of the course. John Meyers really helped me out giving me a break into the headwind.

After splitting a couple primes, John let me know that he was pretty tired from racing masters earlier in the day, so it looked like I was in for the win if we could stay away. We kept getting 20-25 second time gap reports, so we kept pushing. On the last lap, a 4-man chase group got very close to us, but we were able to hold them off. John sat up in the last 150 meters, to let me solo across the line for the win – my first this year. It was a great race, a great win and a great payday. Looking forward to BTR 2010!