AE bike party / Fun at the Track

I went to the Architects/Engineers bike to work lunch at SVR. It was fun. There were bike commuters from several firms from around town. The room they had for the lunch was packed. I guess there was a challenge last year between some of the firms and they thought they'd do it again this year. They decided to do a press release in case anybody else wanted to participate and they got 22 responses! They had awards for the most over all miles, highest participations, and some kind of weighted category that was weighted so that SVR happened to win. :)
One of the commuters who commuted almost 1000 miles by himself during May told us a story of an encounter with a bear on the trail!

I looked around a saw a few people I knew and one of them was Phil, the bike ref from the track. He works at SvR and he showed me some photos of his racing days at his desk. In one of the photos his is giving this other guy a lead-out. This picture is signed "Phil, thanks for the lead out! Greg Lemond" I was amazed. I figured he had a racing history but I wouldn't have guessed. As a transportation engineer Phil does planing for development of bike ways - very cool!

I rode out to the track after work and did the cat 4 women's race. I had Mark's wheels last week and I think they made a difference because I felt sluggish in comparison this week. I was happy to get second but it was a lot of work. Beth from Byrnes came out to race and won pretty easily. I tried to chase her down but couldn't match the speed. On the point-a-lap she broke away and took all of the points and I used up my legs trying to chase and then had a hard time on the final sprint. The win and out was tough too - I think I got third. On the final 4x4 I managed to take second on most of the points so I got second for the night. Two more upgrade points. It helped me that there were a few more riders because last week I didn't get any upgrade points even though I won. I think I am half way to a cat 3 if you count participation points. I got to try out my sneaker move. You go down to the sprinters lane and try to look causal while you roll of the front. And then ramp up the speed while trying to look like you are not working. It wasn't successful but I think I did catch the field off guard. Ha ha.

Mark raced with the masters but got relegated on the chariot race for getting a push. We didn't realize that pushes weren't allowed so his teammate gave him a monster push. He looked good though. He said that the Masters was actually harder than the cat 3's races he had done.