I’ve been open with how I’m using TR to prepare for the USAC national calendar stage races and criteriums in in a couple of threads in the past, and I wanted to keep the trend going with the Joe Martin Stage Race that just kicked off in Fayetteville, AR earlier today. If this is spam/annoying, let me know and I’ll stop creating new threads - but I’m happy to answer any questions/comments!
Day one is a 113 mile road race for the pro men, and it played out like a classic road race - hard at the beginning, break goes (getting up to 7 minutes!) and the field relaxes too much, and then it’s flat out racing into the final selection. Today ended on top of a 4-ish minute climb, which makes it likely to be one of the key GC days along with the uphill time trial.
And Stephen Bassett (my teammate) won! And I captured the final 6 or so minutes on GoPro! You can see it all go down from my point of view here:
This is a pretty raw edit since, you know, I’m kind of busy this weekend, but I’m going to be trying to get a race analysis/commentary up sometime next week. I’ll also be running my camera tomorrow and likely during the crit, so be on the lookout for more stuff!
I finished 10th (10s down, after perhaps a bit too much celebrating) but we’re obviously all in to defend Steve’s yellow jersey for the next couple of days. Tomorrow is another long (110) mile road race, likely to end in a sprint if a break doesn’t go.
Update - Longer Race Commentaries Below
21 Likes
Brilliant footage. I was gassed just watching this! Great effort by you to launch your teammate too. Looked like that final right hander robbed you of speed though.
Looking forward to more 
No, keep these coming if you can, your Redlands thread was fantastic and it is always cool to see a guy with a 9-5 actually stick to some domestic pros in a UCI race. When I line up against guys of that caliber I just get pummeled into oblivion.
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Thanks! I figured either the group would hesitate and let me go, or he would be able to sit in the wheels into the final uphill kick to the line. At this point in the race, everyone pretty much only has one match, so I was trying to make some people use theirs at the wrong time, or take advantage of the fact they wouldn’t want to use it there.
I might have been touching the brakes into that right hander to give Steve a bigger gap coming out of the corner - that’s why I swung right onto his wheel as he comes past. Just a little crit dog move I’ve picked up over the years…
When I slotted back in, I was thinking “Oh man we’re going to go 1-2” but couldn’t keep the pace the guys were sprinting up the hill after eating that wind in the backstretch. And you can see I’m pretty much on the limit when they drop me!
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Late update on Stage 2 - pretty tough day out there and a pretty busy evening after we got back.
The plan was for me to get in the early break to take some pressure off us to chase it back. After about an hour of racing early, I finally got into a group of 10, one of which was 3rd place on GC. I sat on the break to protect my teammates lead, which made some people unhappy and there was a lot of attacking before a split of 3 riders broke off from our group about 50 miles in. Eventually my group went back to the field, and I helped my teammates chase the remaining break down up the big climb of the day and down the descent.
After the whole group came together with around 30k left, I was properly blown up and went to the back, happy to relinquish control to the sprinters teams on what was primarily a downhill finish. Unfortunately, they let a rider only 23s down on GC off the front with two others, and with the help of some sporadic time gap information, that move made it to the line with enough of a gap to take the lead from us.
A tough day to swallow mentally after we rode really well to defend the jersey and did what we thought we would have to do, but things went better in the TT today - I had a good ride to take 3rd on the stage, and Steve won (again…cause the dude is on some form) to take back the yellow jersey with just the criterium left! I’m currently sitting in 4th, just 7s down on the GC podium.
Unfortunately, no GoPro from yesterday because I never turned it on, as I was saving it in case I would end up mixing it up in the sprint. In retrospect, it would have been cool to have the footage of me getting into the break, but c’est la vie. Definitely running it in the crit tomorrow, though.
Strava from Thursday, Friday, and Today
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Man that’s a hardddd effort
Realizing I never posted an update for the end of the race - we won! We were able to do enough to keep Steve in the GC lead (not without some stress in the final stage criterium) and win the race overall! An incredible result for the team, and something that was incredibly cool to be a part of.
I’ve finally gotten around to editing some of the footage I collected over JMSR, and recently released a race analysis where I voice comments over significant moments in the race that happened in the final 40km or so in Stage 1. Video is here:
I’m almost done with the video about us defending yellow in the criterium and hope to post it later today, so keep a lookout for that!
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Final Update on this one…
I made a video about the stage 4 criterium here:
This race was all about protecting Steve’s lead in the GC, where he came into the day with a 19 second advantage. With 3 time bonus sprints (3,2,1 seconds) and time bonuses at the finish (10,6,4), we wanted to let a small non-threatening group get up the road to eliminate any risk of Steve losing.
Much to our surprise, an Aevolo rider 10th in GC snuck into the break, which started to get dangerous when it built up a 30s advantage. This is such a hard criterium it makes it hard to get an organized chase to bring some time back, so I had to revert to some different tactics to keep the break in check.
After everything, we managed to keep the break close enough, giving Steve the overall win (!!!) at a UCI race, by far the biggest thing for our little amateur program to date. Looking forward to kicking off criterium season with the Athens Twilight weekend coming up, and race season really picking up in May/June!
Strava file here: 45.9 mi Ride Activity on April 7, 2019 by Jarret O. on Strava
Would love to field any questions/suggestions regarding the videos and/or analysis. I’ve just started doing these, and would love to make them as fun and informative as possible!
3 Likes
3,100ft of climbing in a crit! I can see the race was an hour and three quarters but damn… my mind is blown 
Yeah, it’s a really tough course. I think the case could be made that this is one of if not the hardest crit course in the US, up there with the River Parks Criterium in Tulsa and Snake Alley in Iowa.
