Friday, July 8th, 2005
Thursday track night.
Red is heart rate, blue is speed.
Well, the new bike worked fine. I may need to tweak the position a bit to get it just right but it performed well on the NSC Velodrome. I was worried a bit as I don’t know if just any frame will work on our 43° banking but it seemed ok.
I, on the other hand, sucked tonight. Both MP and I were off our game. There was a great turnout in our category with some new riders having been upgraded. It’s fun to race with a bigger group.
First race was the 10 lap scratch race. The field got blown out about 5 laps into the race and I was not in the right spot to take advantage of the big acceleration and ended up near the back of the race.
The second race was, once again, the miss and out. I was again able to position myself in the correct spot to stay in the race until the final sprint but did not have enough in the legs to finish better than 2nd.
The final race was a 50 lap scratch race. The race started off kind of slow but then a rider went off the front and tried to gain a lap on the field. He made a pretty impressive effort but we reeled him back in after six laps or so. Immediately upon catching him two more riders attacked and were almost instantly able to gain a half a lap on the field. It looked like they were easily going to gain a lap but when they were 10 meter from catching the field a team mate of one of the guys in the break went to the front of the field and made a huge effort. This resulted in the two riders off the front not being able to gain a lap and also exploded the field into various groups of two and three riders. MP was riding better than me and made some efforts to try and tow me back up to the front of the race but I could not even hold onto his wheel. I ended up finishing the race in 6th place or something like that.
There were a few occasions of sketchy riding tonight. I also came as close to crashing on the track without actually crashing. A rider unable to hold the pace of the pack swung up track and nearly took my front wheel out. Having crashed on the track almost exactly one year ago tonight, I have no desire to relive the experience of wood rash and the hundreds of splinters that accompany a slide on the velodrome surface. One faces a dilemma when having to take quick action due to another riders haphazard movement up or down the track. Do you talk to the rider about their action or just shrug it off? MP had to make a move during the miss and out race in order to avoid some action happening next to him and also to stay in the race. There was some yelling about it during the race and one rider may have left the track early in frustration. My feeling is, so long as it’s not chronic behavior and a crash did not occur then everyone was riding heads up and took the appropriate action to avoid the crash. That’s just racing and I’ll shrug it off. I did not say anything to the rider who cut me off. However, if a crash occurs, it’s then time to start the verbal pummeling. You have to do something pretty careless and pretty stupid to cause a crash at the velodrome and, as far as I am concerned, your penance should be the tongue lashing from everyone in the race.
Next race, Hopkins Crit this Sunday.
In answer to some questions that I have received, yes I am able to get my heart rate up to, and sometimes over, 200 beats per minute. Not bad for 37 years old. I just wish I had more power to take advantage of all those beats…
