Two weeks ago was a pretty bad night for me. I was running a bigger gear and it didn't work out. I thought it was the wheels I was using and I raced the same gear last friday with my fast wheels and I decided it wasn't the wheels it was the gear.
I didn't place well in my first two races on Friday but I raced the madison which is always fun and won $5!
There was a bad crash in the men's 3's keirin and Annette went down with one guy from the Garage. The guy got up but they ended up taking Annette to the hospital via backboard in the ambulance. That put a damper on things. I found out later that Annette was mostly OK - some bruised and cracked ribs but not too bad considering she hit the track pretty hard.
Yesterday I did the inaugural "international style omnium" at Marymoor. It was a daytime event for a change. I'm used to racing under the lights so it was weird to have the sun out. The event consisted of 5 separate races with placing determined by overall score. For each race the winner got one point, second place got two points, third got three and so on. The lowest point total won. So you couldn't blow any of the events without getting punished in the scoring system.
I stripped out one of the bolts on my chainring so I ended up doing all of the events in the same gear. I chose a smaller gear (88) to save my legs. We did a flying 200 time trial, a 5 mile scratch race, a pursuit (5 laps), a 24 lap points race, and a 500 meter time trial. It was grueling and torturous.
I didn't do that good on the timed events, but I was happy with how I did in the mass start races. In the scratch race a group of three got off the front and the rest of us were all working together to chase. On the final lap I found myself in second position and I used the slingshot method to take the field sprint for 4th. Then we did a pursuit - my time was 3:13 for 5 laps. This was the first time I've ever done that distance for time.
Next was the points race. I was in a lower gear so I was better able to respond to the accelerations. I was happy to make the first selection and was in a group of 5. I misjudged the second sprint, which started very early and found myself gaped off in no-man's land. I rolled up track and waited for the chase group and worked with them to try and catch up. It was more like a team pursuit than a points race. I was in first position on the last lap this time. On the back stretch I rode out of the saddle to discourage passing. On the corner a rider tried to come around me and I accelerated it to force her to stay outside and ride the longer route through the corner. I maintained posotion to take 5th for that race. Overall for the omnium I was 6th, winning $10! So $15 total for the weekend.
The race was well officated. Since Marymoor has never hosted an internation omnium before the officals were out to get experience as well as us. The event required a lot of coordination. All of the timed events needed to have the tape in the right place - so they had to do adjustements between each race. We were happy to have such a well-run event. It will be fun to do it again next year.
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