Saturday, March 03, 2007

Track Champs - Day 2

Groundhog Day

Day 2 of the NSW State Masters Track Champs.

My buddies did great again today.

Sprints / Derbys

Dave W: Gold in MMAS5 sprint
Peter B: Gold in MMAS4 sprint
Alan T: Silver in MMAS3 sprint
Andrew B: Gold MMAS2 Sprint
Michelle C: Silver in WMAS3 sprint
Tanya B: Silver in WMAS4+ sprint derby

Scratch & Points Races:

Dave W: Gold MMAS5 Scratch race
Michelle C: Gold WMAS 2/3 Scratch Race
Tanya B: Gold WMAS4+ Scratch Race

Way to go guys!

And me....

Well, I have to be satisfied with 4th place in the MMAS3 points race. Would like to have added to the team tally of medals but not to be.

Ended race on 26 points. Manged to get a lap on the field in what I thought was the winning break with Graeme Albon and Charlie Gascoyne but didn't count on the Canberra rider who also got a lap. Was completely cooked - last 25 laps I was just hanging on, thinking my 20 point lap bonus plus sprints was enough for 3rd place but I couldn't go any harder anyway.

Very hot day, difficult to keep fluids up. Was not the smooth rider on the bike that I normally am. Very hard ride for a pretty average power.... Dunno - thought legs might have been better but that was a good effort (have never taken a lap before in a points race). It's another step up as far as I'm concerned. I'll just keep knocking on that door.

Graeme is the benchmark rider (silver medallist at World Masters points race) and he took two laps on the field and Charlie is a hard man who picked up several sprint wins as well as the lap. They were 1st & 2nd. Canberra guy beat me by 4 points. Bummer! Same end result as last year (same 2 of 3 riders in front of me) - at 47km/h average speed, the race was 2km/h faster than last year's.

Pursuit in the morning. This will be interesting....


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

fair assessment of your points race alex.definately the hardest i've ever seen you try in a race. cant see it being much harder at nats eh.
anthony

ps graeme & charlie both felt they picked to big a gear for taking laps

Alex Simmons said...

Thanks Anthony
What gear were they on? I was thinking maybe I needed 1" shorter gear but not much in it.
I felt better after I saw Bishop's excellent time in the pursuit the next day. At least I kept 'em honest.

Anonymous said...

my recollection is 94 but i'll double check it wasn't 93.