Focus Kele Focus..Ok, yea, I was gonna talk about the racing, RIGHT!..
(PLEASE NOTE, I'M TRYING TO LEARN HOW TO USE PAINT, SO CLICK ON THE PHOTO AND THEY BECOME MORE CLEAR)
ok so I met Jen at her house (Jennifer Tripplett...not sure which letter there is doubled..who rides for Gregg’s) about 2:30..and head up north in the rain, and traffic. My trusty bladder asked me to stop after a couple hours..and we pulled over at a Rest Area..and check out this tree...
No that’s Jen, the tree is behind her (just kidding Jen, you don’t really look like a tree). Just imagine that’s how big they were..man what have we done to our environment??
Anyway, we make it to the track about 6:30...and being such a Fred...it takes me a good hour to get my gears/wheels/bars/head adjusted and ready to ride..
Finally I’m riding and Jen leads me in a few flying 2oo m (from speed, you do one lap fast...you go from the top of the track down to the inside..cause that’s the fastest..but I’m not so good at it..YET) At this point it’s now about 8pm, and I’m starting to loose motivation. I had been instructed to do a structured warm up, w/ 2 2oo m jumps, 2 flying 500 m timed, a 2k effort, and starts...so I was a BIT behind..but there was NO way..so I decided just to do a 2k effort.
It went well, I guess, there were ppl on the track, and I was surprised how much less freaked out I was once I knew the clock was running..but I was still about 4 seconds slower that what I need to do in LA..and 4 seconds is a lifetime when you are talking about a 2:34min effort.
My lungs, about uprooted from my chest..and lucky me I now have the Grandma Smoker’s hack for the rest of the weekend.
Saturday of Racing
Today we started w/ the 200 m sprints...so they time your 200 m and then the top 12 move on to compete in match sprints. And what do ya know, I was 13th..DAMNIT! I missed all these races (ok, like 2). So most of the morning, I watched everyone ELSE race (not one of my favorite things to do..BTW!)
This guy below...poor thing...became my 'go to' guy for all my questions...about saddle ht, riding the black line, bumping, raising my bars...he was extremely helpful, and knowledgeable...then I find out he's the multi-multi time medalist sprinter...man, I'm sure I sounded like an IDIOT...oh well, my instincts sent me to the right guy!! Thanks for all your help, Keith!!
Then we had the Kerin...w/ a guy on a bike as the motor (in a Kerin, it’s a 8 lap race..the first 5 is behind a ‘motor’, so it paces you up to speed..then pulls off and the last 3 laps are a match sprint for whomever crosses the line first). In one of the final on Sunday, the guy closest to the bottom of the track started too early and crashed into the ‘motor’ guy..and took him out for the rest of the day (apparently totally his frame)...not sure how that happened.
Seems like there were an awful lot of crashes this weekend..pretty much every type of race we did someone crashed (of the 3 groups racing, A/B/Cs). If I didn’t know better, I’d think they have a large population of SKETCHASAURIS'S here in Burnaby!!! I almost went down once, in a snowball race..no Chrissy we weren’t racing snowballs..This guy went down on uptrack from me, so I had to drop down off track..and for someone who’s not real sure about racing track that was REALLY scary..but I held it up (not the snowball) and kept the rubber side down!!
But, let’s talk about these fans!! Man we had a packed house on Sat…I could barely hear myself think…
Sunday, was a little more reasonable!
Jen, had a good weekend of racing…
She really gives it her all!!!
So, did I mention the announcer…he was a riot..good ol’ Canadian humor…and he knew just enough about each rider to mention some humorous/condescending/embarrassing information about them throughout the weekend (I escaped w/ only having the fact I was wearing the kit of my Defunct Ford-Basis team, and getting the award for the most contorted face during a long solo effort in the final scratch race). But poor Mike ‘Hamburger’…this guy apparently holds the Guinness Book World record for eating a hamburger the size of a barstool (including bun and order of fries)…and we got to hear all about that…and THEN apparently, Mike is going for another title with Cheesecake..right after the races on Sunday…and although we all were invited, I should really be getting home…but, man it would be awesome to watch a healthy person try to consume 11 POUNDS of cheese cake in under 9min…sorry I have to miss it! Good luck Mike!!
Jen and I are thinking of going out for the Sonics Cheerleading squad…unfortunately the picture of me tossing Jen, from a perfect basket toss into an inverted one-legged superman tuck…didn’t turn out.
On Sunday, Heather VanVerbensomethingDutch, Jen, and I did the team sprints…well, they did well as a team…I never quite caught on! You all three start together, as seen below…
Then each person does one lap as hard as they can…to try and get the fastest time as a whole. I mistakenly ‘waited’ for Jen..then she came bolting by me, and I never got on her wheel…it was fairly comical…but Jen and Heather did great…
That's a wrap on the weekend. I'm headed to LA Monday....I'll let you know about that adventure soon!!
1 comment:
Canadian men eh!
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