Rollin' in San Diego...

okay, so tonight was the usual tuesday night track racing at san diego velodrome.  i wasn't sure if i'd be recovered enough from the cyclovets omnium yet, but whatever - we'll give it a shot.

 

motorpaced warmup race - 2nd.  now, this is really more like a really long keirin - the motor gradually picks up speed for 40 laps, though.  At lap 38, the motor pulls off, and whoever is left gets 2 to go.  i was there, but had to bridge a gap going into the bell lap and got passed on the line.  all good, though.  the legs seemed to be going just fine.  sweet.

 

miss-n-out - 5th.  i was kind of bummed about this one, as i can usually make the final 3.  the competition was hard, though, so that wasn't too bad, really.  but i started feeling tired and was wondering if i should just call it an early night.

 

15-lap tempo - nothing.  the pace was quick, and i mostly just sat in the field.  for me to collect points in this race, i need to roll off the front, but i never did, and i still felt pretty tired.  ouch.

 

60-lap points race.

 

at this point, i asked the race director if we could simply do a 60-lap madison instead (that way I'd only have to ride half the distance - remember, i'm tired, folks).  no dice - points race it was.

 

for the first half of the race, i didn't do too much.  i partipated in some early sprints when i had the position, but tried not to bury myself too much.  about halfway through, though, a small group of us rolled off the front and proceeded to lap the field.  wow.  the 2nd half of the race was my awakening, and i scored 1st or 2nd in pretty much most of those sprints.  awesome.

 

just goes to show that even though you may be tired in the shorter races, the longer ones can still work to your advantage.  and that road and track can actually complement each other very nicely, too.  word.

"Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years..." - LL Cool J

 

Sorry for the lack of updates, folks.  Times have been hard for sure.  I've been training a lot, that's for sure too.  And work has been fairly demanding, just wanting me to work more and more hours - not quite fully understanding the beauty of the part time schedule.  But whatever.  I'm walking a fine line at work, and things are going okay, but i'm just trying to keep all parties happy, you know what i mean?  word.  especially since i'm taking just about the entire month of july off for racing - booyah!  but i'm getting ahead of myself.

 

anyway, mostly just heavy training from the end of may to the middle of june.

 

june 18 was the state road race championships - a 109 mile race with a bunch of climbing, but nothing mountainously hard.  i wasn't too excited about this race, but decided to go and help out my teammate chris dagz.  the race was actually going just fine - dagz flatted on lap 1 - we all dropped back - changed his wheel - towed him back up to the field - good work.  a bunch of climbing later and i got dropped around mile 60 or so on a pretty serious climb.  that sucked, but there were a couple other dropped guys, and we chased all the way to the feed zone climb.  we were just catching the peloton at the bottom of the climb, but then the peloton accelerated (and the climb started) and that was pretty much all she wrote.  i rolled around for the rest of the lap, but then pulled out.  i'm not so much one for quitting races, but i didn't have the food and drink necessary to do another lap, so it was better to just stop.  that was around mile 70 or so.  anyway, that kind of sucked, but frankly, i did better than i thought i was going to do going into the race.

 

you see, it was back in the fall of 2004 / winter of 2005 that a sports doctor told me, "you have the potential to be national champion in the pursuit [on the track], but you will never be a good road racer."  and i bought it.  shouldn't have, but i did.  believed it for over a year, but not any more.  why?

 

cyclovets omnium 2006 - that was just this past weekend - june 23-25.  i finshed 9th place overall - how ya like me now, doc?  (now, for what it's worth, that sports doctor might have meant i wouldn't be successful on a european road racer level, but i interpreted it as even on the local/regional level...)

 

friday - individual time trial - 10 miles.  5 miles out, turnaround, 5 miles back.  there's a minor hill (~200 feet) in the middle of the course, so you hit that twice.  I scored 5th place with a time of 22:18.  That was so chill, I can't even say.  Now, time trials are not my favorite - i prefer head-to-head racing - but to beat a lot of accomplished road racers was pretty awesome - it's a true test of fitness.

 

saturday - road race - 67 miles.  not a super long race, but the climbing was pretty ridiculous and this was out in the desert during the summer, so the environmental conditions were miserable.  i got 14th - beating lots of guys who can climb much better than me.  pretty surreal, to say the least.  I must have gotten dropped 4 or 5 times during this race, but with a lot of help from my teammates, i was able to finish well and collect omnium points for the overall result.  and really, i can't stress enough how important my team was during the RR.  From support in the feed zone to a draft on the road, it all made the result possible.

 

sunday - crit - 75 minutes - 1 km course with a bit of a hill in it - but not super hard or anything.  finished in 13th.  there was a 3 man break up the road for the finish, so the field sprint was for 4th.  i didn't have a "bad" sprint, so to speak, but it wasn't too super either.  i held my own - didn't get passed - but didn't pass anyone either.  it really boiled down to being in a slightly bad position for the finale.  i was on the outside coming into the final turn when i should have been on the inside.  oops.

 

so with all that said, i'm in complete shock that i finished in top 10 overall at this stage race.  sorry for the lack of blogging folks, but that's where all the energy went - into that top 10 result.  flippin' sweet.