Geumsan Criterium

Last Saturday I raced at the Geumsan Criterium.  I was looking forward to doing this race since there aren't many crits here in Korea.  The course was pretty good but not really very crit like.  It was 4.5 km long with one long gradual up hill and 2 steep uphills about 1km from the finish.  There were only about 5 corners on the whole course too.  It was a nice course for a race though still.  The temperature was super hot(upper 90s) and the racing started off pretty aggressively.  On the second lap Hyung Mo Lee(a super strong rider who wins a lot of the races here) attacked and got away solo.  We weren't doing a very good job of chasing in the field and he eventually got about a 2 minute gap on the field!

I was thinking I should just sit in the field and wait for the field sprint but I saw a break go that I thought might be able to stay away until the end.  It had gotten about a 20 second lead on the pack when I decided to try and bridge up.  I attacked out of the pack hard on the long up hill and managed to bridge after about 1km of chasing but I really blew myself up with the effort.  We had built a good lead on the field though and I  thought we might stay away until the finish.  However with 2 laps to go the field caught us!

At this point I was pretty tired but I thought I would give the field sprint for second place a shot.  I went into the last corner(400m to go) in 3rd place and started sprinting but I quickly blew up and got passed by a bunch of people.  I ended up around 15th or so but my teammate Yeon Deok took 3rd so overall not a bad day for us.

The race calendar switches focus to mountain biking for a while now with a bunch of big mountain bike races coming up in late September and October.  This weekend I'm doing a mountain bike race in Daegu.  I just saw the start list and the field looks pretty good.  It should be a fun race.

Me and my new teammate Oh Hyeon Seok. 

Me going on the attack to bridge up to the breakaway.  You can see the field in the background.