Sunday, June 5, 2011

There's my legs. Race report (6-3-11)

The sun was shining on the velodrome; promising a great night of fast racing and good times all around.

I tried some different things in my build up to racing this week and it seems to have aid some big dividends. I rode hard on Wednesday and Thursday so that my body would be used to the efforts.

The format was the same as it usually is; Tempo(points for 1st and 2nd across the line on each lap) , Scratch (one finish) and a Points Race (multiple sprints for points and ties broken on the last lap.) Apparently, a lot of category 3 racers showed up since they had to split us into two groups (usually done when there are about 30 or more racers.
I kind of figured that this would be the same as most weeks and I would just sit in and get a few points here and there in the tempo and scratch race. This is in fact how it always goes for me. Not so this time. Half way through the 10 lap tempo I noticed a chance for me to gain points come up and I took it. Turns out that I surpassed the rider in front of me and took the 2 points. I relaxed a bit expecting to have the pack right behind me but noticed that there was a big gap and decided that I may be able to get the next lap. I took the next two laps and then noticed that Aaron Berntson was getting close to me. He is a strong rider so I pulled up and planned on joining up with him and trading pulls for the remainder of the race. Somehow he wasn't gaining on me and by turn 3 I decided that it was
go time and that I would just go full on for the rest of the race. I'm not quite sure how I did it but I did just that and stayed on my own for the remainder of the race; snatching up 10 out of 20 available points.

The scratch race also went well for me. There was a lot of movement going on during the ten laps but I ended up getting third. I think that I could have done a bit better if I had to halt my sprint a couple of times due to people starting to box me in.
I kind of lost it a bit in the points race and only gained two points. I just didn't have a ton of energy left in me. I feel that the rest of the racers had saved up their energy for the points race since it is the one that can make a winner or a loser. You can win the night having not effected any of the other races and you can also lose it if you don't have the energy left for the fight. I think that some of that was due to misjudging when to eat before the race and possibly going out too hard the day before. Ill experiment a bit with what I eat and how I approach the race next week. Even though I didn't have much energy for the points race I still ended up fifth in the overall and I'm quite happy with that especially considering that my season is just beginning. The wheels performed wonderfully (more on that later and some gear upgrades to come) and were a great addition.

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