2012 Thompson Criterium of Doylestown
Yes – this is Tarn Aeluin and yes this is a post about a bike race. Bike racing is cool – I was always a pretty good cyclist although I never competed in any big races. I trained alot, but primarily as a way to get in shape for soccer. Getting to see a world class race in the USA is pretty hard, but there’s one right in Bucks County. Doylestown, PA is the site of a really exciting race every year – the Criterium of Doylestown – a criterium race on the streets of the city in Bucks County PA. 35 high speed 1.4 mile laps with narrow streets, tight corners, and hilly terrain make for an exciting and often crash filled event.
This year the weather was perfect – about 77F, sunny, great breeze too. Post below is a video of the first lap in high def and a gallery of pics from a few laps. We usually stand on death corner and sure enough on about lap 20 a couple of guys got the line wrong and wiped out. Luckily just a lot of lost skin and nothing else.
You can hear the wind generated by the bikes as they go past. Since this is the first lap they are going quite a bit slower than during later laps.
Action Shots
Here’s some pics that I took as well – the video and the pics were shot with a Nikon Coolpix 8100S.
The video is shot in high def – but you need to switch to that in the Youtbue players.
Looks like a fun time – how fast were they going?
Thanks! The pics are scaled down quite a bit in resolution – the originals are much nicer. They were going pretty darn fast – I would say 20-25 MPH around this corner – it is very tight – later in the race the leaders can really go around fast. Down the road there is another downhill section that I would say they are well over 35MPH.