NCNCA Masters State Track Championships, Day 2

500m TT
Points race
Team Sprint
Team Pursuit

Damn, I love this sport! Every single thing about it.

Got to the track and was only entered into two events, the 500 TT and the points race. I was looking to better my time in the 500 maybe and just to hang on as long as possible in the points race. I hate that race, but you should do what you don't like/aren't good at in order to improve, so I was entered. A month ago, I was going to be doing the team pursuit, but a crash 3 weeks ago wiped out 2 of the pursuit team, so no team events for me. Except someone forgot to tell Donna that. She was in the hospital a couple of days with broken ribs and other injuries, but she showed up Saturday and rode the 2K pursuit and brought her tent and food and drinks and cheered everyone on. She got there Sunday and said, team sprint? Let's do it! Oh yeah, she's also in the 55-59 age group and tough as nails. So we entered the team sprint. We then got talking to Anne and Libby (two more gals in Donna's AG) and they were up for trying the team pursuit, so we ended up entered in that.

500m TT:
One and a half laps of the track as hard as you could go, standing start. I got a good warm up and my legs felt pretty good. I still need to work on my starts as I was thinking more about the quick count instead of pulling back (and not pushing down), but once I got rolling, I felt pretty good, pedaling fast as I was still in the small gear. 48-something, about the same as my other effort in July (riding the bigger gear). Ended up 4th out of 5.

Points race, 30 laps, points every 6:
They combined all the women into one race but were going to score each age group separately. Luckily we all knew each other so you knew who you were racing against. My goal for the race was to hang on as long as possible and gain experience. No thoughts about points, except for trying to limit the negative points (you get negative points each time you are lapped). The field was full of some pretty fast gals, including 3 from the Proman team. I hung in for a bit on the first sprint, then spent the rest of the race jumping back on and trying to hang on, but mostly just keeping my legs loose.

Team Sprint:
Two laps as hard as you can go. Standing start and one leads out and the other slots in behind. First person hammers as hard as possible with your teammate on your wheel and then #1 peels off (in a pre-determined zone) and #2 does a second lap as hard as possible. Pure speed. DAMN FUN!!!!!! I was rider #1 and pedaled as hard as I could go. Donna's saddle slipped downward when she sat down on it, so that slowed her a bit, but we still did OK. 2nd place.

Team Pursuit:
4 riders, 7 laps (3K)
This weekend was Anne's first time to ever race, though she's been riding at the track for a while. Libby has been to nationals. Both are in Donna's age group. And the four of us have never ridden together, so this was just for fun and the experience. For the team pursuit, you ride in a paceline and the fastest generally is to rotate off the front every half lap, but since we've not ridden together and you can lose time if you drop a rider off the back (which can be done if the exchanges aren't good, we decided to do one-lap exchanges. Also, you can drop off a rider since the time is on the first 3 across the line, but if you drop one off too soon, the rest just have to work harder. After deciding on rider order, it was time to ride. Libby took us out with a good start, not too fast, with a nice ramp up. I was sitting in the third spot behind Anne and after the 4th lap, Anne started to fall off a bit so I slotted in and the pace picked up a bit and Anne fell off, so we were down to three riders. We picked it up on lap 6 and really picked it up on lap 7, finishing strong. There was just one big category for the women (+30) so we were riding against the fast young gals. 4th place.

After that, it was time to crack a beer, pack up and drive back to SF. A totally fun weekend and I now know what I have to work on for nationals, which begin 4 weeks from tomorrow. One interesting thing from the weekend is the largest women's age group was the 45-49 AG. We rock.