Via Crit Londons best bike day | Cat 3 London Cycling Festival

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The Via Crit is one of the best days on a biek you can have in London. In the afternoon there is the Brompton World Champs which is honestly such a vibe. In the evening you have the mens and the womens crit racing. Hopefully this gives you a good idea of what the Via crit is all about, The Cat 3 crit race was a bit of a London hitters event and honestly it was too much for me but i love throwing myself into the atmosphere of it all. Riding a bike in london has never felt so good. Once again the Via Crit absolutely delivered and i recommend joining in next year.

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[Music] we’ve made it to the single best day of the year in London guys welcome to the Via Crit and welcome back to the what life let’s roll [Music] so the Verrit is also called the London Cycling Festival so there is tons going on 3-day event came down to it last year it’s my first ever crit race basically last year i I remember being so nervous this year we’ve made it to Cat 3’s which takes place at 6:45 this evening and it’s 11:45 now i got plenty of time been invited down by Brmpton cuz the Brmpton World Champs are happening today so there’s tons going on i’m not going to race the Brmpton World Champs i did it last year it’s quite intense it’s a good laugh they get really good numbers of people that come and watch but yes today’s the big one we made it to Cat 3 so that I could come and do this race on the Saturday i’m really looking forward to it and London has really showed up with the weather 31 degrees let’s go and check out what this whole London cycle bicycle festival is all about [Music] heat heat [Music] obviously [Music] we’re going to be showing you the Cat 3 race in today’s video i have a few cheeky plans they’re going to try and help me out i mean it’s going to be brutal i don’t really know how you relate it to anything that I have done before because it’s just very unique like a unique course unique style of racing it’s full gas 40 minutes plus three I think is what it should be so hopefully like 45minute race i’ve got a few tactics and I’m going to let you in on the first one which is I’m not going to do a sighting lap so when they let everyone on the course usually roll around for a sighting lap and then pull up at the start line i’m just going to pull up to the start line hold the barrier and stay clipped in because apparently being in the first 10 wheels and there’s 50 people racing is super important we got 6 hours before we kind of got to worry about that kind of stuff but yes welcome to the V [Music] so first I’ve been invited down by Brmpton and we’re at this uh really nice little cafe in Cold Drops like right in the center of Cold Drops little cycle themed cafe we are out and the outs guys out and the outs in two weeks more zen i literally can’t wait story for another time though [Music] the nice thing about the London Cycling Festival is you get a bunch of brands and we’re going to go around have a look at a few before we dive into the racing later this is probably um I don’t know whether to describe it as and forgive me for my obsession with him chris Miller’s wet dream or worst nightmare but it is a gorgeous bike set up on Shramm Red i can see I can see an influencer rolling around Sydney on that [Music] oh
that is legit such a That is gorgeous then we got the Vaniser RCRF I think it is which is their aerobike wonder what that weighs cuz that that looks What What do you reckon this weighs yeah i might without pedals and cages and
without pedals and cages but without cage 7 i reckon they can get that down to like 7.5 uh without pedals and cages and probably on a Jura Ace build I reckon 7.5 that is a deep head tube [Music] excellent stuff good racing [Applause] [Music] so Lee raced the one two last year he’s racing the one two this year runs the showroom over at V which is where we’re going to go now giving me some hot tips about the race and it’s all my worst nightmares which is first 12 minutes yeah you got to race it off the front you have to be super aggressive make sure you get a good starting position uh when we’re under the start finish line and uh yeah be really assertive with your position
cheers dude yeah
these are these are all the things that I kind of like worry about when I go when I go bike racing which is I don’t like to kind of like try and nudge my way to the very front of a start line i don’t kind of want to go super hard off the start line to be the first person into a corner i’ve got to put all those fears and I guess you know I spoke about it a little bit at Helington like all that kind of imposttor syndrome to the side today and just do it just suck it up do it for a race just do it race it like a 12 minutes try and get to the front of the start line be on the front of the start line just pretend like you are the man until you become the man i might not become the man but let’s try let’s try tonight we got to overcome those fears because we want to be a proper bike racer but yeah it’s good it’s handy chatting to Lee and the boys cheers uh about their tips like the E12 guys and what they suggest to do and 50 riders so being through the first few corners you know apparently if you know you’re at the mercy of other people dropping a wheel if 50 riders on a narrow course that strings out you know that could cover pretty much the whole back straight if it’s completely strung out so moving up is hard okay so we have to tackle some fears today have to tackle some big fears today which makes me a bit anxious but we’re going to do it we’re going to try and do it anyway [Music] we still have plenty of time i’m going to show you Via who helped organize or organize the whole thing um is actually a cycle shop near in Cold Drops cold drops yard which is next to King’s Cross and yeah like they have a proper vibe they do loads of ride outs into kind of Essex on weekends they do I think they do some women’s rides they do mix group rides yes there always something going on and they share that on their Instagram and they share it on their web page as well okay so this is Via Crit when we’ve actually been to a few events via Crit this is Via Bike Store we’ve actually been to a few events here before um I I describe it as a high-end bike store in North North London they organized via Crit lots of brands that you’d expect um in a nice kind of premium bike store big on their standards got the Rafa kit i know they sell like Yeah paz kit Q365 it’s 100% if you are traveling to London and it’s next to King’s Cross station this is one to like definitely worth a visit little cafe and stuff so you can grab a coffee and yeah the via is largely up to these guys and and their involvement check out the fact a store that’s got factor bikes and the standards [Music] so we have a a bit of inter an interlude between the racing we just had the Brmpton guys coming on and we got the bike racing in a minute but now we have Tom Tom from from VIA who who’s um going to explain what is happening on the track at the moment
okay so this is Rafa Race School um there’s a number of people who’ve signed up rafa have brought their ambassadors uh in as well and the idea is to do a slow couple of laps of the course i think they’re going to walk some of the corners the uh the ambassadors and pros are going to explain the racing line and the idea is then that the guys on the race school will ride the corners then they’ll get some live feedback and that’s that’s the plan
i quite like that because obviously Rafa put a load of money into like the crit racing scene in the the last year this isn’t an official Rafa championship race is it
not what they’re doing now but I believe the race tonight is the E12 okay i didn’t realize that yeah super
okay cool so you can come and learn more about bike racing from the pros cuz I wish I’ wish I’d known about that
you should have signed up
could have done with that i’m going to go and steal some tips from the guys let’s go and find that happening dude top tip for this corner
uh send it just carry as much money as you can don’t go there go around as outside as you can and when it gets to this bit relax it’s going to carry all your way down and if you if you are in the front group
coming into the last lap
do you have to be leading by the corner or do you reckon you can do it in sprint
i reckon stay top three wheels there’s a chance where you can like hit somebody going down this ramp shift into your biggest gear and as soon as you get down to the bottom you’ll be at that speed absolutely descending
exactly
yes
which one are you racing
see you later all right hey I’m Amy this is my YouTube for the day as Max goes cycling [Music] obviously doesn’t watch the what life um okay so it’s time to talk bikes i’m going to sign on now the three racers over subscribed which is awesome i also think it’s going to be hot as hell as in it’s going to be fast as hell we’re going to chat bike tactics in a minute because
my running friends are here see you later
okay bye-bye so yes we’re going to talk tactics in a minute because basically the first lap is just going to have to be hell for leather like there’s there’s no way you can’t hammer the first lap on the wrong side to sign on but yeah I am like no matter what happens super excited about this race i think the three race is going to be fast i think it’s going to be hard um I think it’s going to be fun hopefully everyone keeps it upright well
should be cool [Music] right probably time to get the bike [Music] [Music] right it’s 8 minutes past 6 races 6:45 i am nervous as bleep so nervous not not for any other reason than I know it’s just going to be like super fast and super hard so it’s like 10 minutes of hell I think um which I don’t yeah right i’m going to get on the bike and just roll around for a bit see what I can do um get a little warm up in because the tactic basically has to be a thousand watts off the line to be the first person into the corner but um yeah 1,000 watts off the line into the first corner but everyone knows that so that means you got to do 1,0 and then the next person do,20 until it becomes just an absolute blitzfest i can’t promise anything tonight other than like I am excited i do i want to say that but also probably more nervous about this than any of the other races just because the quality of riding is just getting so high hey dude how are you
how are you yeah good good good cheers man um yeah the quality of rider in and around Well no every everywhere I’ve been doesn’t matter like Goodwood um Abington the quality of riders are just so high and that kind of worries me i think my only My only attribute that I think I have is being able to
I don’t have the highest watts but I think I can sustain it to the end of a race if I can make the end of the race I just got to make the end of the race are you all nervous energy aren’t you you don’t know what to do
you don’t know what to do
yeah i thought I got over being nervous but this is this one gets me every
Why have you got up what are you doing we’re in the pen it’s half 6 15 minutes till start time nervous as hell i think everyone’s nervous as hell i think everyone wants to Everyone wants it to be chill it’s not going to be chill it’s going to be super hard um and we’re going to go out and enjoy i’m really pumped for tonight i think it’ll be fun uh I’m not as always the offici on this stuff i don’t really know what I’m doing but I’m out here doing it or trying to anyway
50 50 riders on the start line um other than that I can’t I can’t give you much nothing else to give you it’s good racing right let’s do this hopefully I can give you a bit of an insight of what it’s like to ride the vehicle i get off to a reasonable start although I was at the very back of the pack well yeah okay i was thinking you know why not not do a sighting lap you can’t not do a sighting lap everyone’s on the course you just be an idiot stopping also um cheeky cheeky a couple of guys in the mast’s race the following day tried to do that and the BC guy on the line basically said “No you got to roll around so you had to.” So they were very they were very hot on it you also weren’t allowed to clip in and hold the barrier on the left anyway look there’s my boy Kai rolling around this gets hot guys like the first few laps are really hot i saw a photo from the start line and all the guys that took it off the front were basically at the front of the corner before me and the rest of the boys were off the line at the back so there’s like 80 m maybe um before we even get off the line right let me give you a rundown on the course lot of fun a like first and foremost lot of fun what do you need to be good at this race crazy good bike handling skills if you’re a cross boy if you’re a cycle cross boy girl you’re going to hammer this race good bike handling skills massive ability to go anorobic every 18 seconds probably less right okay so this is what it feels like to do a lap and there are points like this where the race slows up and you kind of feel like you’re at the mercy of whoever’s in front of you i was terrible at the ramp terrible and we’ll get on to that okay let me give you a hot lap you get this dead straight and it was super hard because you have to go max effort down that straight every time i was only going max effort because everyone else is going max effort and I try and hold the wheels of the guys that are in front of me i didn’t feel like there was much benefit to being in the wheels on this race or the points where you were in the wheels it’s just so small so you get the front straight and the back straight and we’re just about to turn into the back straight and this I Yes you know granted if you’re in a if you are sat behind a few riders here you are going to get a bit of a um advantage of sitting in the And this is what was killing me guys you can see me using these straights to try and move up and this was basically where I went completely wrong was that the first 5 minutes of this race I am going 172 on a heart rate that’s my that’s that’s fully anorobic that’s fully like thresh well over threshold what’s it called when you go over threshold just like nuclear um that was me trying to like move up through the groups so I was doing that i did two or maybe two and a half laps of that before I kind of blew up and it wasn’t a casual blow up it was a massive blow up i just went way too hard trying to like move through groups or move through not groups just riders and then it then I had to work really hard just to try and hold a rider this guy manages to manages to have like a bit of an issue with his clip and that actually happens a few times i think it happens again in a second which became a bit disconcerting and then you got to think about maybe not sitting too close to his wheel because something is obviously going on where he’s not clipped in very well and it’s going to affect his um yeah his bike so here we go there’s our first victim slide out on the top corner last two laps um and that was very easy that corner absolutely took souls uh I think there’s a bunch we’ll see another one in our race um and then yeah so everyone I we saw tons of people going down in that corner and there’s Juke hello man as he now rides off to join some of the front groups i don’t know how he ended up sitting so far so far back in the first place but the thing that made this course really really really hard is the way that some people are really good at kicking out of things and some people aren’t quite so good at doing corners and then you put that all into like one big old smores board it just makes the whole thing really hard and I you know I don’t want to necessarily I I think I would have to really train quite specifically to be good to be good at this race i think my bike handling’s come on a whole load um and thankfully I managed to keep it up the whole race but not only that is like you have to be have really good bike handling skills and you got to be able to go anorobic repeatedly for 40 minutes and I wasn’t quite able to do that the efforts and the kicks and the times that I was trying to kind of kick out of corners was really taking its toll and then my heart rate obviously settles down a little bit into like 166 which is my tempo heart rate it’s like a tempo heart rate that I could hopefully hold for kind of like that 40 40 minute at 172 there’s no way I can get I couldn’t hold that for very long at all bear in mind I’m older than some people so my heart rate doesn’t fluctuate as much um and also doesn’t get quite as high as some of these 20-year-olds that are no doubt off the front now as they are rolling around i think we’re about to see like um just another incident or a couple of incidents as we kind of roll around this corner three guys kind of laid their well one guy obviously laid his bike down and then a couple of guys probably went into the back of him which was very easy to do especially with the speeds coming through these corners once the group broke up or once it was all broken up a little bit it then just became like a game of like trying to find someone or a couple of people to roll around with and I was in agony here is a really good example of what I think you should do when the front here’s the front group the front group are coming through when the front group come through I basically consider my race over especially coming into a corner like that like I consider my race just like race off um and just let the guys come through i think there’s like 12 of them maybe in that front group um and I just literally like completely offline as much as possible really trying to like make sure I’m not in their way and then that obviously makes it a little bit harder because then once they all come through you then have to like kick to get back up to speed a little bit and you can see how much the Constantina effect into these corners is as the front group come through and we just kind of like ride up to the back of them and obviously they are stronger so they just can kick off that uh start finish line way stronger than I can um and here’s another crash so we were obviously then got getting overtaken by the front groups and then as we come around this bottom corner this was the only time I didn’t see too many crashes on that corner but it looks like there’s three guys bundled up into the barrier i think just taking that corner a little bit hot they actually changed that corner for this year and it made it quicker made it better made it a little little bit safer this is a funny incident because I had basically our little group three or so riders rolling around um my heart rate is a little bit lower now because I think I’ve just kind of like right I just need to make the end of the end of the race some guy comes around me kicks on through and he starts taking these corners really quickly and then he just absolutely slides out um and I was quite I guess not lucky but like I because he was so far ahead of me coming into that corner that slide out had no effect on me whatsoever but I did think um I think I actually say it to the camera you might you won’t be able to hear it but I was like “Oh I felt like he was taking that a a little bit quickly um trying to especially that second corner as it rolls round.” And then here we go this is the bell lap this is me on the bell lap probably being lapped by some other riders just a quick one today because it was 40 laps of the same 100 800 something meter course i think there’s one guy behind me you can just see his shadow as he’s kind of rolling down through the l uh down the ramp hammer it as hard as you can head down put in a kick as much as possible i don’t think anyone’s going to kind of be able to um I think you’ll be doing very well to hold someone and then come from behind on that ramp [Music] brutal [Music] that was so brutal so brutal can’t feel my legs and my mouth is so dry that was so brutally hard i’m so impressed with how good Not saying this cuz I came basically last but so impressed with how good people are at riding bikes [Music] lee that was so you enjoying it i
I don’t know what to say cuz it’s like I feel a bit defeated sometimes you know like
you should be lapsed and gaps you know
be proud of your effort on the result man
yeah I appreciate it man i appreciate it actually yeah thank you thank you cheers Tom thanks Lee that is so humbling turns out my only positive attribute I have as a rider is not quitting that’s got to count for something didn’t crash this time
how was it
oh I got lap for
Yeah
but I stayed up right yeah are you out of uni now or are you still at uni
still at uni you were 18 last year so you 19 how old are you last time
19 20 this year
20 this year yeah
still getting spat
yeah that’ll make sense
oh me
well done man would you enjoy it
oh it was brilliant fun yeah it was a lot of fun to get dropped there at least amazing is
that from today
yeah I was kind of like right near you you might have actually was it just behind me i heard it but I obviously didn’t look
i skidded out but like someone kind of like came through to the side
that corner was scratching there was at least three there at least three
i couldn’t hold your wheel well I was just letting the other groups come through
once it was that it was just like
Well it absolutely cooked after 6 minutes
yeah yeah absolutely
6 minutes I was like I was like I say that I think people I think because people love my face right looked a bit calmer [Music] so very quickly Archie who I actually did some races at Abbington like at the very beginning of the season he took it was a two four cat race you took off the front didn’t you crushed it this evening and was leading off the front that I can hold on to um for like the first what like 10 15
15 minutes basically yeah and then what happened on the last lap like there was a bit of chopping going on
yeah i won’t say too much cuz the others are strong but yeah it was a bit choppy on the last few corners but uh
And then where did you where did you lose the lead on the last lap then
well I kind of let a few come past i don’t want to leave the sprint out so uh I was coming around kind of maybe fourth wheel and then uh
yeah I don’t know
are you still late now or you have your first 17
oh my god sorry yeah yeah I remembered um yeah so it’s still 70 this is a course for like I’m not I’m not trying to like I do think being able to just go anorobic and then go anorobic again and anorobic again
it’s like a cross race
yeah and you were you’ve got a cross background didn’t you
yeah a little bit yeah dude well done man like did you get podium or did you fifth
oh man
i’m not worried
are you happy though
i don’t care i’m just happy I kind of uh raced properly really yeah
there’s some good London hitters in here like you’ve done well man
yeah i wanted to kind of uh
I kind of wanted to do do something instead of sitting in you know what I mean it’s a little bit better
well then you look really happy with yourself like which is sick which is sick good to see you there
yeah yeah that’s so cool i love it i love it okay morale was probably a little bit low after that race but it’s super high now i love the fact that Archie was just absolutely crushing the race 17 years old
that kid I really hope he keeps going and keeps improving and I can keep telling his story because it’s awesome if we start at What Life Race Team Archie mate I’m going to need your phone number cuz you’re in um it’s such a vibe today such like such a good vibe the community of like the third cat racers that I managed to get to meet and the fourth cat guys who are racing tomorrow and I’m going to come back tomorrow and yeah it’s like it’s really cool and it brings my mood up hugely and I love it i really love it [Music] [Applause] [Music] this whole day was just so good uh one of the best days in the cycling diary put it put it in your diary for next year verit come do a race it’s so good such a good vibe really great people um and a lot of fun but the racing is so hard so bear that in mind it is brutally hard um we’ll probably wrap that one up there good fun enjoyed it so happy I did it and it’s been it’s been a fun journey and I’m hope it continues and that’s all I’ve got to say i’m going to keep turning up um guys thanks for sticking around please do like subscribe and I’ll see you on another one soon i say it hurts to live this way i don’t mind the pain and I like to feel the shame of it why would you leave