Picture outright stolen from the great Steve Woo, track official, promoter, racer, photographer and blogger and all around nice guy extraordinaire.Well, back to back track nights are always good for a little pain and suffering all in the name of tryin' to get faster and score a nut here and there. In general I felt better during the day so wasn't too worried that tonight would be a repeat of the dead legs from Tuesday night. Format was four races, Scratch, Tempo, Win-n-out and Points. Like tuesday, there weren't large fields but these are USAC races so they divided by actual categories, and all the 4/5's were together. Which made me feel kind of bad for the cat 5's...
15 lap scratch race: I purposefully left a small gear (well, a 48x15 is small for me...) thinking I should just spin my ass off tonight. BOOM the race went off super fast and I thought, "Oh shit, not again." With 6 to go I couldn't close a gap and went off the back. I stayed on the lead lap but was very unhappy.
14 lap tempo: I geared back up to the usual 48x14 for the tempo and BOOM! The damn thing went off too fast for me again. I went off the back even quicker and did get lapped right at the end. I exited the track very pissed off and discouraged wondering where the hell my legs had gone. Wasn't I winning this shit just a week ago???
8 laps to win and out each lap after: Still stinging and pissed off I attacked in turn one after the neutral lap too catcalls and boos from my dear fellow brethren racers (hehehehe). Four laps down and I was maintaining almost a half lap flyer when the pack finally decided I'd had enough and reeled me in with two to go. RATS! I felt better about at least being an instigator and as I took cooldown circles in the warmup circle I realized I suddenly could barely breath. After a two minute search into the depths of my bike bag I finally found my inhaler and took two puffs. I wouldn't say it was instant relief but the burning subsided by the time the last race went.
36 lap points race, (6x6): The start was weird on this one as there was NO WARMUP AND PRIMES ON THE FIRST TWO LAPS (WTF^2). This threw several people for a loop and the first three laps were chaotic with people all over the track in ones and twos. Somehow, however, it all came together about three laps in. When the first sprint came, I found myself in a good spot and rolled easy across the line for 3rd place points. The rest of the race I found it easy to snag points on almost every sprint and even won one of them in there. As a result I was 2nd for the race after sucking all night long!
And even weirder is that 2nd in the points race was good enough for a 5th place in the omnium. I didn't expect that. I guess the lesson in there is... I dunno. Don't give up? Praise abuterol? Take what you can get? Play to your strengths (points racing has definitely become my favorite track racing and the longer the race, the better). I dunno but add one point for upgrading!
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