FSA Grand Prix!

The weather provided lots of drama for this year's race. After a month and a half of sunny weather and no rain predicted, it rains on the biggest race of the year!

Friday evening, after warming up and getting all ready to go the sky started clouding up. There had been several races completed, but just before the men's Madison we started feeling drops of rain. They had to call everyone off of the track immediately because it gets slick very fast and you can wipe out before you even know what happened. It didn't look good with big grey clouds but they had us wait about 20 minutes.

When the rain started really coming down I ran under the nearest tent. I smiled big and asked the racers if they didn't mind sharing. It turned out they were racers from the Portland track, Alpenrose. We were chatting away when Mark found me under the tent and said "hey I just found these chain ring bolts on the track". The Oregon guy said to the other "hey those are the last two bolts you lost!" It was randomly lucky.

It stopped raining but the track was still wet. Then they asked the Men's teams to ride around the apron (flat part of the track). Mark was racing the Madison and I was very nervous seeing the track still wet. But a few minutes later it was dry and they had a safe race. I was up next for the 40 lap points race. 40 laps is twice as far as we usually go and I was really worried with all of the out-of-town superstars in the field. But our Friday racing served me well and I was able to keep up. We had a field of 31 which is very large for me. I was so happy to finish the race with the field. Last year I was lapped twice!

I went back out to the track Saturday morning and did a flying 200 and a 500 meter race. I was about the same as last year on the flying 200, 14.56 seconds but about two seconds faster on the 500. It wasn't fast enough to qualify me for the sprint tournament though. As I was heading home it started raining again! They had another delay.

I went back out Saturday night and after everybody warmed up and they ran a couple of races it started pouring. They had to cancel racing for the evening. We all headed over to the Celtic Bayoo restaurant and had a good dinner with some of the out-of-towners. It was fun to hang out with everybody and swap race stories.

Then Sunday was the rain-make-up day. I raced the 5-mile scratch race and the Madison.

On the scratch race I took a few more chances than the day before and attacked a couple of times. At one point I saw the top girls watching each other and I casually rolled up to the front. I was careful not to "look" like I was attacking but just started pedaling fast without too much upper body movement. I was able to get a gap before the others realized I was going, and then they were not motivated to chase. I was about 1/3 lap up, and they rang the bell for a $50 prime. I went as hard as I could because I figured if I got that much money I didn't have to finish the race. But the group chased hard and I got piped at the line! It got the crowd into it though and I heard a lot of people cheering for me. My teammate did great and got third in the final sprint. Hooray!

The final race was the women's madison. We had 8 women's teams. More than the men did for the second year in a row. It was so hot this year though, since it was in the daytime. We rolled off and it didn't take long before I was so thirsty and hot. It was a long race and I was very tired. I was so happy to finish that one! I dumped water over my head after the finish.

It can rain all it wants to now! FSA is done until next year.