Of the six events possible I was planning on participating in four. The sprints were not on my agenda, the 3K pursuit was a biggie, the 1K time trial was big, I failed to cat up to a 3 so I couldn't do the points race, there were loose plans to do the team sprint, and we had a solid-ish foursome for the team pursuit. But that's not exactly how it panned out.
3K pursuit: I'll take pity on the two people who might read this and explain that a pursuit is where two riders start on opposite ends of the track and race a set distance (3 km for my event). It's kind of cool cuz the two riders either match each other or you can see one surge and then fade as they race. Look it up on youtube. What sucks in the pursuit is when one rider is so much stronger than the opponent that they actually catch up to them and pass them. Yeah, that's what happened to me... I knew I didn't exactly jump up to speed well (stupidly messed with my handlebar/aero bars that morning without trying out the launch) yet was way too far into lactate burn after the second lap, despite intentionally holding back. After that it was just seven more laps of thinking too much and hurting too much and generally riding a piss poor time trial. In the end I rode something like a 4:18 which was dead fucking last and not even close to the rest of my age group (TEN seconds to the next place and TWENTY THREE seconds off the winner's time - sheesh how humiliating).
I left the track in a pretty dark mood.
Next day...
1K TT: The good thing about this event is that it doesn't really give a mental-case like me enough time to get into their own head and mess themselves up. It's basically: launch, sit down, get aero, then max out your leg speed until either your head explodes off your shoulders or you cross the finish line. I felt like I had a strong first lap getting up over 32 mph by the end. On the second lap I held about a 31 mph pace but then on the last lap I was really struggling and my speed fell under 30 mph when I hit the windy backstretch. And then it was over. I drifted up the bank, then back down and off the track completely spent. At least I knew I threw absolutely everything I had into the effort. But in the end, it was a repeat of the 3K. In my age group there were only about 2 seconds separating the leaders and then there was me another six seconds back (with a 1:22 I think?). I know I shouldn't hold myself up to guys like Michael Hernandez, John Licatesi and John Cheetham but, damn, I wanted to at least be competitive. Too bad, thanks for coming, the exit is thataway...
Between Steve Jones having left to the hospital (to accompany a teammate of his who managed to have a pretty nasty fall during the warmups) and my having lost ALL ambition to compete, I found John L. and Dave Muminski to let them know I was out of the team events. It turned out they didn't seem to be up for it either but I haven't seen results yet so maybe they found someone and rode anyway.
After putting my bike in the truck and changing back to regular-folk clothes I watched all the points races and especially enjoyed heckling my age group during their race. But, dammit, it really sucked watching the points race. Since June I have been working toward getting my Cat. 3 just so I could do that race and to come close but fail and then have such a let down in the time trials, it would have been fun to dive into the points race even if I would have been barely hanging on.
Oh well. The real bummer is that between working and racing all weekend I really didn't have any time at home. Kris understood that it was a big goal for the year and that the work stuff is out of my control but I'd definitely like to have thelost weekend back...
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