What a totally great day yesterday!! The day I've been waiting 6 months for....getting back to the track and being able to train!
My teammate Ben's comment: "You looked really good out there today! I think you are going to have a really good year."
That about wraps it up.
I headed down yesterday morning to the beginner session since our weather forecast is the pits and it looked rainy. Supervisor John had sent an email at 7:30 AM saying it wasn't raining but looked like it might so decide whether to drive down or not. I told him to call me if it started raining and headed out. Got there and not rain but very overcast with about 30 people total in attendance.
First up was a 30 lap warm-up. I've been riding a small gear all winter on the rollers both due to my knee and to try to learn how to ride at a higher cadence so I left it on for the warmup. The 46x16 (77.63") felt great and I was able to keep up with little effort and spin merrily along. I'm pretty sure that I had a huge smile on my face the entire time. After the warm-up I flipped the cog to a slightly larger gearing [46x15 (82.80")] and used that the rest of the morning. I was easily riding along at 95+ cadence, up to 105.
I don't remember everything we did, but we did 2x8 lap efforts with 5 people in a group, working on transitions--pulling off the front on the corners and getting back on the end of the line. We had our Team Roaring Mouse group, plus 1, and we worked well together.
We also did 2x100 meter jumps, riding along 3 abreast. Everyone rides around easy (12 mph) and on the whistle, the first group of 3 does a hard jump for 100 meters, then eases up and gets on the back of the group. We did one seated jump and one standing jump. I was a little leery of the seated jump since in January at my one foray to the track, I tried this but it made my knee hurt. But yesterday, no pain!! I wasn't as fast off the line on the seated one, but on the standing jump, I took off and stayed standing the entire 100 meters. And no pain!
Next we did the "ride off the front of the group on the whistle and sprint around to the back of the line" drill. We did this twice. The first time there were two of us working together and the second time it was a solo effort. That was a couple of good hard efforts.
The last thing we did was the Australian pursuit. What this is is everyone picks a light pole to start at on the rail (32 light poles at Hellyer) and then on the whistle, you take off and try to catch the person in front of you while not being caught by the person behind you. If you get passed, you are out. I lined up at the light pole right behind Ben and took off and got behind him and sat on his wheel. He was playing with me, but I was able to sit on him and we got going pretty fast (27.68 mph my computer read). I tried to go around him, but he took me high and kept me at his hip. I felt pretty good though! Then young Mouse Matt came flying by us and we were both out. Lots of fun!
That was the end of the morning session. It had sprinkled a bit, then the sun came out, then spit rain, then partial sun, then clouds, but it never got wet enough to force us off the track. Since I was feeling pretty good, I stayed for the afternoon session. We only had 5 people: 3 fast guys, new guy, plus me. We did another 30 lap warm-up and my bike was making a noise, kind of like a piece of paper or plastic or something was stuck to the wheel. I got off and looked at the bike and the wheels and couldn't find anything. Peter Bohl was there and he checked it out. Nothing. The noise wasn't there holding the bike and spinning the wheel, just when the pedals were engaged and we took the wheels off and never found what it was.
I got back on the track after changing gears to what is probably my race gear, but found that it's way too big of a gear for right now. My cadence was only about 65 and my quads felt like they were loading up. So I changed to yet another gear, something in between. At least I haven't forgotten how to change the chain rings! After doing a number of laps on the third gear, and the noise was still there. It never did quit and then after 2 hours and 15 minutes riding time, I figured that was good for the first time and packed up and headed back to SF. I dropped the bike at the shop to figure out the wheel noise and headed home. Perfect first session back.
Comments