Crits are the most accessible form of competitive road cycling — short courses, marshalled corners, spectator-friendly, and usually over in under an hour. The demands are specific: repeated hard accelerations out of every corner, sustained high speed on the straights, and the positioning skills to stay near the front without wasting energy. Crit fitness is different from road-race fitness — it rewards anaerobic capacity, bike handling, and the ability to recover between efforts more than sustained threshold power. For the Roadman audience, entering a local crit series is the simplest way to find out whether racing appeals to you before committing to a full road-race licence.