Last night was the first night of the Kissena Twilight Series - 16 weeks of racing on Wednesday nights. There are five groups: Men's A (1/2/3, 4 by permission), Men's B (4/5), Men's C (5 only), Women and Masters. Two races per group and two features.
I was originally signed up to race in the B group, however Dan had signed up for the C group and I was interested in trying some of our strategies again. I talked to Alan (the official) and switched to the C group.There was a points race scheduled, so Dan and I planned to use the same attack we used during the points race last weekend. Gui didn't make it to the track that night so instead we enlisted our friend Pablo to be part of our break. We explained our strategy to Pablo who was really only half listening.
The strategy would have to wait however, as the first race for the C group was a Win-and-Out. In this type of race there are a series of sprints, with the winner of the first sprint winning the race, the winner of the second sprint coming in second, etc. This particular Win-and-Out would consist of 9 laps with 3 sprints - the final sprint would determine third, fourth and fifth.
Since I'm not that good at sprinting my plan was to attack on turn two and try to make a break for it. However right before I started my attack another rider tried to get into the paceline I was in right in front of me. He obviously didn't see me there until just before he was about to bump me and he freaked out. He swerved up track but miraculously did not cause a crash. In that moment, someone else attacked. I jumped and got on his wheel, but it didn't last long as the rest of the field responded and was soon passing us. On the next sprint Dan and Pablo attacked and I caught on to their break. This time the rest of the field didn't respond quickly enough and so it came down to a three man sprint. We were all within half a wheel of each other but Pablo ended up winning the sprint to get second place. Dan and I still had a gap on the field so we decided to try and maintain our break. On turn three of the last lap this guy Andres came flying past us. Fortunately his was a solo effort and we still had an impressive gap on the rest of the pack. I slingshoted around Dan on turn four and ended up in fourth place.
The next (and final) race for the Cs was the points race. Dan, Pablo and I had a quick last minute discussion of our tactics and then lined up on the fence to wait for the start of the race. Unfortunately we go split up on the sprint lap with Pablo near the front, me in the middle and Dan in the back of the pack. Right after the sprint I started to attack and shouted at Pablo as a passed him to get on my wheel. I had no idea where Dan was but I hoped that he was close enough behind us that he could catch us.
At the same time we launched our attack, another group of riders made a break for it as well. There was a bit of chaos as our group and the other group overlapped and it was difficult for us to keep a proper paceline. In addition to that Pablo had not really been paying attention to our strategy and so when I pulled up track on turn 3 for Pablo to take a turn pulling he followed me up track instead of passing me. In the end two riders in the other break pulled ahead with Dan persuing them and me persuing Dan. And it remained that way until the end, putting me in the fourth position for the second and third sprint.
After the races were often I spoke to Alan about upgrading to Cat 4. The requirements are 4 days of track racing and a track safety class. They don't really have any track safety classes at Kissena, but John Campo has a training clinic every Saturday (and I had gone to one) so Alan told me to fill out the form on http://www.usacycling.org. When I got home I filled out the form and Alan approved it so as of last night I am a Category 4 track racer.
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