The first photo is actually the finish of the first stage. You can just barely see my right shoe and shoulder behind the guy that's in second. I started too far back to do much more than this, but I was happy with how it went. I passed 5 or 6 people in the sprint, and just managed to get the guy on the far right at the end.
This is the infamous corner on the crit course. This actually isn't a great line, but it was hard to roll it cleanly if I didn't have a clean road.
Entering the corner. I probably wasted too much energy doing this, but I tried to hit it first whenever I was near the front. Unfortunately that meant some work into the wind at the top of the front stretch, but I had last year's crash etched sufficiently into my brain that I preferred that to trusting someone else's line. The only crash of the day happened behind me with 3 laps to go.
This is the top of the front stretch with one to go. I had about 30 meters at this point and took it as hard as I could. The position of my chain on rear cogs is an indication of how hard the wind was blowing, because it really isn't that steep of a climb.
Just after the finish. Cooked, but happy.
And finally, even though this is really blurry, I can't brag about my cornering skills without some proof. I'm still a cocky SoB, but every once in a while (ok, every once in a long while), there's a reason. Any time I hit the corner first, I could open up gaps like this without really pushing it too hard. Sometimes I'd give it down the back stretch, other times I'd sit up and wait, but mostly I was just having fun. You can't quite tell, but if you finished the turn too wide, it got really off camber and pinched right as you exited the turn. I was able to avoid that on every lap. Everyone behind me in this photo is exiting too wide and is going to have to brake before then can start accelerating again.
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