Back Racing at Maindy Criterium with a TACTICAL FINALE!

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A little about Ed….
Ed is an elite cyclist, 2019 British Hill Climb Champion and former Under 23 British RR Champion. He has raced as a Continental level Professional Rider for one of the most successful British cycling teams in Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, Azerbaijan to name a few. He is also a public speaker, coach, and founded the on/offline cycling community, Backpedal. At the start of 2021, the Discord community began, and plonked many of Ed’s viewers in to a 550+ strong group of people that had many things in common. Not least wanting to explore the world and pedal their bikes faster!

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hello everyone welcome back to the north car cycl YouTube CH oh no sorry wrong Channel sorry sorry um welcome back to the channel everybody big fan of uh noral cycl videos of course but we’re here today with a Criterion video the hence the joke and well it’s the first Criterium I’ve done in a long time I was actually invited over by Jack who’s on the right hand side there on the start line who’s been uh helping organize these spectacular criteriums in Cardiff City Center I’m not going to show you the whole race it was about 30 minutes but I’m going to like jump in and out a couple of laps we’ll skip forward and stuff and show you some of the best bits but yeah um I I was invited along I mean who is I to say no I did ask if there was a hill on it and there obviously isn’t unless you got the bank in there is a little bit of a hill um but fun fact let’s start one off started off with a fun fact the last I raced here was I think 13 maybe even 14 years ago a lot of my junior career so between the ages of 16 to 18 I spent a lot of time racing on this track and cl our Motor Racing circuit and PM bra mot racing circuit these were the three places I spent a lot of my time um learning about bike racing and just generally just fogging myself twice three times a week um to try and uh to proove uh and race my bike for a living look where we are now uh we’ve come full circle back racing on this track and this facility has actually been around I think since 1958 um and it’s 460 m in length however as you can tell we are using the inside of this circuit it is a ve Dr layout all right but we can also use the infield section which is where they do like psycho proficiency stuff um there’s some stop lights there’s some uh roundabouts there’s some sharp corners and uh it’s regularly used by clubs such as well cir Jax as you see in here and u m the Flyers cycl club uh who you may well know as the club that Garen Thomas and Luke row started their illustrious careers in um but yeah we’re not here to talk about them uh we’re here to try and get around this Criterium as best as possible as I said there’s no climbs so why am I here well I I was actually on route to a photo shoot and I was in the area so I decided like it matches so sign me up I’ll have a go I I will tell you one thing I’m not afraid to say it but like it’s been a while since I’ve had to follow people around corners quite as fast as this and you know a lot of these guys they are quick especially in a straight line but when going around a corner you get reminded when people do this you know week in week out you uh you remember why you stick to just Hill CL but yeah it’s true like when I was a junior when I was racing you you know these kind of races like twice three times a week it’s amazing how much you you improve you know it’s the technique side of things it comes back quickly this was only a 30-minute race and I did feel like I was gradually getting better by the end of it but like when I was racing as a junior doing these like I was like pinging around these things I really enjoyed these not so much now because there’s a lot of sprinting there’s a lot of sing there’s a lot of breaking and I don’t really enjoy that as much as I used to uh I am 30 this year some say I’m getting old but I say I’m just becoming a bit more steady state so we’re going to zap it forward a little bit um the start of the event pretty much like saw a break of two Riders get away you might be able to see them in the far corner of the left left shot there as we as we come around one of these banking now the two guys got away they were so far away and I do need my eyes tested that they they were they were actually two strong Riders and I was at this moment in time not quite realizing who they were quite happy to sit in the group and follow people and wait until maybe there was a little bit of a a release in the pacemaking because as you can see here this section where it goes through the roundabout and you know the left-hander the right-hander and another left-hander you you’re not really capable of moving and you’ll see at the end of this video why there was a little bit of a playing of tactics which I have to apologize I think I annoyed a couple of riders but at the end of the day was kind of tactical um but there was a there was a nice play that we made at the end between myself and rodri who was also in this race who had actually raced the race before this third and fourth Cal race this is the elite first second third and fourth categor so if you wanted to you could double up and these City crits by MD which is their Instagram uh account name they throw up some incredible memes midweek for you to entertain yourself with in preparation for coming down and trying it for yourself but they’re trying to make it fun they’re trying to keep the introductory theme there so that you know you don’t feel like there’s a lot of pressure um it’s a good cause for beginners I feel but it’s also a good course for you know the more advanced Rider the reason why I think it’s good for beginners actually is because you can you could see or I could see by watching the race prior to this that the people that were doubling up you know because the races are so short yes they could be intense but usually because of this infield section things things have to slow down and there’s there’s a there’s a certain Max Speed that you can do through through here like they say in Psycho cross that you know there’s only a certain speed you can do and once you hit that speed on that course you know you can’t go any faster you just crash um but on this course it has that kind of feel you know there’s only so fast you can go on this straight section on the outside of the track and then it’s also already so fast you can go on the infield section you know um and I think you know although there were people who cornering a little bit faster and had a bit more practice around here it wasn’t really like enough to fully split the group where I went to the front and I went like hard like I thought I was going hard uh and I had to keep going hard because I thought these two guys who off the front they’re never coming back so we’re going to have to go really hard so for like three laps I just went as hard as I could and to be honest we didn’t really get anywhere uh um and and the actual like the two guys stayed away and come first and second fair play they went from start to finish off the front essentially and held us off and it’s very difficult to sort of get a um a state of cooperation on this kind of course as well another reason why it’s actually really good for beginners I think on this course is there’s plenty of runoff area like you know you see all the grass there’s plenty of space here on the track so there’s lots of places to go and um it kind of makes it you know a little bit less daunting when you haven’t got things to hit I feel so let’s zap forward to to see these last couple of laps and we’ll watch the last 5 minutes or so and Rod’s in the Cardiff Ajax kit and the last couple of laps you know we knew that the group was away now we weren’t going to be able to catch them you know effort High efforts being high for a while um the group is thin down now though you know there’s there’s only a handful of us literally six of us potentially uh and I wanted to run my my inst 360 camage here so I could could of look forward and look back but unfortunately the mount that I ordered didn’t arrive in time so we’re kind of just stuck with the forward view from gold sorry about that but yeah it’s better than nothing so rodri comes through to the front and takes us through uh this this twisty section with a couple of laps to go now and the lap was about you know a minute minute and a half not very long um and of course like when you come out of one of these Corners particularly the last corner you haven’t got that far to go at all actually so positioning was kind of important um and each week they change like the course slightly so you could be rather than going around that roundabout you could be going like taking the third exit at it rather than going straight over it be taking the third exit coming back onto the track at a different points who’ve got like slightly modified course which could suit somebody you know with a different kind of fen type different strengths and a really short finishing Sprint then so one of the guys was telling me that they would turn at the round Bo and they would get back onto that finishing straight and they would literally from there from the corner to the Finish was like 5 Second Sprint so if you’re at the front of the time you know you’ve got like a a huge chance of Crossing that line first or you know in whatever position you’re in so let’s jump forward to like the last 3 kilm 2 kilm which you know actually is not really uh can’t really measure it like that really because it’s the last couple of minutes of of the event really so at this point in time I’m happy to be in the group that I’m in yes the two traps are off the front but as we’ve gone through this r people have just been going slowly off the back uh and it’s got to the point now where there is now only like four of us or five of us and it’s not really through attacking it’s just through just just sustained effort I’m sure many of you will know you know you get like even a 30-minute race which is short right and lots of people say 30 minutes you know you can’t really like everyone can suffer for 30 minutes well yes of course we can but you know everyone will hit a limit at some point and um that could be after 17 minutes that could be after 6 minutes you know so in this race it was coming like later on where people were starting to struggle and I said to rodri in the last two laps maybe it was three laps to go I said to him that we’re going to come like through the technical section and I’m going to like lay off you slightly and I tried it as you’ve just seen with with two or or three laps to go I I I laid off him slightly just to show like what could be done like how much can I lay off and get away with it and give him a small Gap uh and then you know how much what Gap is he going to gain through there so we kind of faked it a little bit and when when I came through to the front on that final straight I did a really good job of essentially just dropping the anchor on that on that corner and it’s quite a fast Corner if you know it rodri and the two guys behind me as well to be fair a really good cornering and you know it’s part of racing that I kind of annoyed them and you know we’re all friends the end of the day I’m not like deliberately trying to be nasty to somebody it’s just it’s just uh you know how are you going to to get the best result out of it for a rider right like now rogy I know I know him quite well C him he’s a sound guy and put in a lot of work a lot of effort and he’s come close week in week out to to winning one of these races and and always been knocking on the door with a Podium and and getting very close and it was nice to see that you know he doubled up by racing first off and then doing this race a second time you can tell going through these bends that I’m obviously not as confident or as fast as these other guys who who race you you know more regularly I suppose but you know rogers’s got a good Gap the two guys are forced to chase although one of them is on on the wheel of the other so he’s getting a little bit of rest um but obviously still having to work hard well we’re all actually having the workout you can see my heart rate up to 180 I’m certainly not getting rest uh here so this last time to I know that I have to fully commit to being you know a bit more Brave through the corners which isn’t so much of a problem on the last lap and I stay tight to the rider in front as much as I can but roders managed to keep his Gap by having a really good final technical section and because I managed to place myself in between these two riders in this group I managed to cross the line in fifth place and able to come around this very strong lead out from this Rider uh I left it way too late but I actually wasn’t coming around anyway but epic race I really enjoyed it I hope you did too hit the like button and I’ll see you in the next one