More training, more track racing

Last monday I attempted to start training twice a day. I was able to pull it off on monday, but on tuesday I had to work late and wanted to get to be early to make sure I got to work on time on Wednesday. I'm racing every Wednesday night of course, so I don't do any training on Wednesday. Thursday morning was the usual group ride to piermont and by the time I got home from work on Thursday I was dead tired. It is now Friday and I spent this morning doing laundry as all my bike shorts/bibs needed washing. To make matters worse I got doored on the way to work this morning and while I'm relatively okay, I'm probably not going to be able to train tonight.

But enough excuses, on to the reports:

On my way to the track on Wednesday, when I was about a mile or two from the velodrome, I flatted. More specifically, I flatted a tubular. I rode the flat the rest of the way and set about changing tires. It took me awhile to pull the old tire off as the glue had really set but I eventually got it off. I pulled out a tube of track rim cement and started smearing a layer on my wheel, getting my hands nice and sticky in the process. I got out my spare tire and started putting it on the rim. In the process I managed to get a ton of dandelion seeds stuck to my rim and had to pull them off as best I could and reapply the glue. At this point some of the guys who hang out at the track saw me struggling with the tire and gave me some help/suggestions and soon enough I had the tire on.

By the time I got the wheel back on my bike the officials were already having the Men's B group lining up along the rail. I pinned the number to my jersey as quickly as I could and threw my jersey on. Of course I had pinned the number too tight and it ripped out of two of the pins. I managed to re-pin it and get on the rail just before the race started (and thanks in part to Sam telling Alan to wait for me).

The first race was a point-a-lap race. Will from the DC team made a break rather early. I decided to chase him. I caught up but was unable to pass him and we eventually got caught by the pack.

A scratch race was next and after an uneventful 8 or 9 laps I ended up boxed in just before the sprint and came out in 6th place.

The Men's B feature race was a points race with 4 sprints. Will and I decided to try the break-after-the-first-sprint strategy. It kind of worked. Really all we accomplished was splitting up the field into a five person break and everybody else. Of course the three people who responded to our break ended up taking most of the points on the next two sprints. Right before the bell lap I decided that enough was enough. I wanted to at least get some points during this race so I started sprint right out of turn 4. No on caught on to my attack. I managed to keep the intensity high for the next 500 meters and easy formed a large gap between myself and the other 4 people in the break. I won the final sprint but ended up in third (I think) overall.

Thursday morning meant another group training ride to Piermont. The landslide that had closed River road had finally been cleared so we took the more scenic, hillier route. Dave and I decided to TT up Alpine road. There was an article on NY VeloCity about this road and how the time it takes you to get up it correlate to how many watts/kilogram you can output. Dave finished in 5:22 and I finished it about 40 seconds later. According to that article that means Dave can output about 5 w/kg while I can output about 4.5 w/kg.

While on the way home from Piermont there were four of us left (down from about eight) so we tried a double paceline. We managed to keep it pretty well organized for a good amount of time and effortlessly maintained a 27/28 mph pace.

I was planning on racing in the Empire State Games qualifying race tomorrow however due to my injuries from getting doored (some bad bruises) and the fact that most of my friends have decided not to race, I think I'm just going to sleep in and hopefully do some training later in the day.