So yesterday I made my second trip out to Ace Speedway, 8 miles north of Burlington, North Carolina. The first trip was two weeks ago, where I placed fourth in the oval track crit series.
This time, I met two teammates – Greg and Adam in Chapel Hill and we all car pooled out there. Greg and I did the “C” race as the two Tri-Cyclists out there at the Cat5 level. My thing this season has been patience – staying out of the wind, not working much at the front. I’d like to say I was able to control those both last night. To an extent, I did, but not entirely. I still pulled too much.
The cool thing though is that our race was almost 2 miles per hour faster than the race two weeks ago and I felt better out there. The race started out fast. From the get go, one guy flew off the front and soon had almost a half a lap on the rest of the field (all 8 of us). But pretty quickly, the combination of the power of the group, and his realization that 30 minutes is a long time out there on the oval to fly solo, he was reeled back in.
The group initially all stayed together, swapping leaders/pulls often around the .25km oval. The wind was similar to two weeks back – strong head wind on the back stretch, with a tailwind on the front. We had two prime laps. On the second, my plan was to not contest and then attack those who went for the prime. Unfortunately, the guy that won that prime ended up with a decent gap that I wasn’t willing to risk blowing up to catch him and then get a gap on him. So I sat in and bided my time.
The dude who had initially gapped the group made a deal with me to do half lap pulls, and we used that to have the two of us off the front for awhile. But unfortunately, we were eventually caught by one who bridged up, and then I believe by two more.
The last 10 laps sped up a bit more, but I felt strong and pretty easily was able to hold my own. With 5 to go, my teammate, Greg (who had unfortunately ended up a lap down at that point), led me out in hopes of getting me a nice gap. I was able to stay at the head of the group the rest of the five laps, but I knew that working those last five was going to take its toll.
As the bell rang for the final lap, I pushed the pace into the 28 mile per hour range, racing around the oval. But, in the final turn, three got ahead of me. A fourth and I sprinted for the final and I would have loved to have seen the photo finish, as I barely eeked out fourth place finish with a decent sprint.
I thought for sure I had my first medal in the US Cycling ranks, but not yet. While the standings ended up the same for me as my first Ace Speedway race, I rode stronger and smarter. My final position was the same, but I feel it was still an improvement in tactics, strength and overall crit racing. There are still several more Ace races to get a medal.
July 22, 2008 Ace Speedway “C” Race
Related Posts:
Entries (RSS)