Saturday Track

Saturday was track day. I went to the beginner session in the morning and got some good riding in, plus, the weather was fantastic! Nearly 80F and sunny, very slight breeze. In November!!! Love love love it. For the winter, I'm supposed to be riding small gears and working on base and learning to spin, so I have 47x17 gears on the bike right now which is 74.6 inches. (This means that if you are pedaling 100 rpms, you are only going to go 22 mph compared to 90 inches which is what I used for sprinting later this year and 100 rpms = +27 mph.) In basic terms, I could spin like a hamster and not go that fast, but it's good practice. The morning session was a lot of fun with a good group. We did the usual paceline warm up, then divided up into groups of 4 and did pursuit. The idea was to learn about holding onto a wheel, making exchanges, and riding together, so the pace wasn't hammering, but rather, good and steady. We did it three different times, changing order and working on different things. Good exercise. After that, we did flying 200s and we were timed. Anyway, doing a 200 with that gearing was interesting. I was at top end speed and my legs were flying so fast that I couldn't stand up. I was able to keep pedaling fast for most of the 200 and ended up with a good baseline time for the off season. The last thing we did was the Australian pursuit (everyone lines up at one of the light poles at the rail and then on the whistle, you take off and try to pass people in front of you and not be passed by anyone behind you. Once you are passed, you're out. I lasted longer than usual which was nice. After that, it was a quick trip to Starbucks and then back and some more warm up for the afternoon racing. I hadn't planned to race, but just do the warm up, but then Taylor, Andrew and Kira, my juniors that I raced with all summer, showed up, plus teammate Ashley, so I decided to race. The extended warm up was nice as you could ride around and chat with people you hadn't seen for a month or two! And did I mention how nice it was at the track? The racing was a fund raiser for Shelley Olds, who is aiming for the 2012 Olympics and needs to travel to the World Cup races to compete. She was just 8th in the world in the scratch race last month in Manchester, England and she's off to Sydney as we speak to race down there. For Saturday, Frankie Andreu was in town and at the track and he did color commentary for the races. That was a lot of fun. It was cool to see how quick he picked up people's names and able to do a running commentary. Very nice guy. The As raced first and there were some really fast people there (a guy from Bissell and Daniel Holloway who rides for Garmin/Chipolte) and they had a pretty big field. Fun to watch them race. The Bs were next and there were three Mice in that race. Finally, it was the Cs turn. It was nearly all women, plus Peter who always races with us and junior Andrew and maybe one or two other guys. Our race started out pretty fast and ramped up from there. 25 lap points race, points every 5. I was able to stick with the pack for a few laps, but then someone took off and my legs couldn't move fast enough to keep up. Junior Taylor and I rode together trading pulls, then when Ashley popped off, we picked up her for a few laps, but she dropped off and Taylor and I ended up riding the rest together. Pretty good effort and I was able to get some good time in with the smaller gearing. After that race, I had two hours in, so I called it a day and took pictures, had some food and a beer and watched the other races. Once the track racing was over, it was hop into the car and drive back to SF to watch the night time cyclocross racing. I think Lance had it wrong....it ~is~ about the bike.