Track Camp - Day 3

First of all, THANKS A MILLION to Mr. Harrington for letting me stay with him for 3 days. Very relaxing to chill at the house after riding and not having to drive back and forth to SF every day.

So today we had to start early (8:30) as the junior program is on Sunday afternoons. I went to Whole Foods last night to get some food for breakfast and last night's dinner and when I was coming back it started to rain and had gotten colder. I got up this morning and it was freezing!! And as I was driving to the track, Mt. Hamilton and the surrounding hills were white! That means snow at 3,000 feet!! At least the rain had stopped but it was still overcast, with patches of blue sky.

Warm up of about 20 minutes in the 81 inch gear. My legs felt tired but not too bad. By the end, we were going about 24 mph, which was a little hot for me, but I hung on the whole warm up, so I'm happy. The first drill we did was the "Russian" drill. Three people at a time, rider 1 doing a straight 200 meter sprint as the carrot (after the three together do a couple of warm up laps), rider 2 is the lead-out rider. Once the sprint commences, rider 2 sprints, but stays a couple of bike lengths off rider 1's wheel. In the turn, rider 2 pulls off so rider 3 (who is the main player in this drill) can "shoot through" off rider 2's draft and try to catch rider 1. Rider 3 sticks to rider 2's wheel until rider 2 pulls off. We did it 3 times, each person in a different position. This is a really good drill, both to gauge how close you need to be to a wheel, but also good for learning how to use the draft. Legs felt GOOD!

Next we moved on to points racing. This was good for me since we'd be riding in a pack and I'm still a little leery about that. We rode out as a group and Steven was in the lead and his instruction was to hold the speed at 18-20 mph until each sprint (15 laps, sprints every 5). After each sprint, we were supposed to re-group. I locked onto his wheel at the start and wouldn't give it up, even when Annabell came up and tried to take it. She told me later that she was doing that on purpose to see how I'd react and give me experience, so I'm glad she did. On the sprint, I got spit out the back with Teresa and Brad, but the big thing is that I was able to stay in the pack and not freak out. 

After 10 laps of the points race, it started to rain and we were whistled off the track. Time for a bite to eat and huddle up under the judge's stand until the rain passed. Within 10 minutes after the rain quit, the track dried out and we got on the track to warm up again. Once everyone got warmed up, we did another drill--half lap sprints. We divided into two groups, and each group was on one side of the track and rolled around at about 12 mph. On the whistle, the last person in each group sprinted around the track to the front of the line of the other group. That was a great drill! Some hard sprinting, but then you could spin easy when you got to the front of the line. We did this twice through for everyone. 

Since we still had some time, it was decided that we'd do another points race drill. A couple of people sat this out, but the majority did the race. Again, we were supposed to keep the speed at 18-20 mph until the bell lap. That did happen on the first 4 laps, then the bell and I got spit out the back immediately. I tried to stand up and sprint, but my legs felt like noodles and said no way. So I pull up to the rail and then dropped in when the group came around. I was on the front at the beginning, but instead of taking the speed back down, Steven and Larry kept the speed at about 25 mph and my legs were toast at this point and I kept sliding back through the pack. I got gapped and then Johnny gave me a little push to get back on Annabell's wheel and I pedaled like mad to stay there! The wind was blowing like crazy, so if you got gapped, you were pretty much screwed.  We again got to the sprint lap and I was done. No legs at all. Spin it out a bit and that was it.

A totally great 3 days. I learned some things, got to practice other things I'd learned last year, and got to feel much more comfortable in the group. Very happy that I did the camp and very highly recommend it.