SSS Round 2

I have almost no idea what to say about Round 2 at this point. On the one hand, I managed a PB at BBN of 13.567 for the Flying 200 - almost precisely what I managed a couple of days after Round 1, and half a second faster than my previous best. I'd forgotten to turn my Garmin on (hooray! shout all those who think I over-analyse)  but presumably the pattern was similar to that run. My jump was okay, though the transition down the track was a little shaky and probably cost me a tenth or so. I didn't feel like my general sickness/fatigue/listlessness affected me too much, though my 'resting' heart rate (not straight out of bed, but just sitting around) was around 100 and I was very strained afterwards. Still, a good ride and room for improvement. Not sub-13 though (not that I was actually expecting that, but) so I BLAME COACH. Still owe him a porsche though, apparently.

So this time I was 5th out of 7 in B, rather than 6th out of 6, and 25 100ths faster than the slowest time in B, rather than 3 10ths slower than the second-slowest. I was (un?)lucky enough to get a bye, which meant that I only had two races in the heats. First up I was against Chris Dann, and he had the lead. I've trained a bit with him, including a couple of weeks ago at this very velodrome, and I thought I had an idea of what I needed to do to beat him, knowing full well that he was good enough to beat me if I did it poorly, or if he did something else. I was basically hoping to get to about 250m out and jump from there, from as near to next to him as I could manage.

And... well, that's about precisely what happened. Except that I dropped a bike length behind him - which turned it in to something more like a flying 200 following rider tries to pass than a powerjump, and the result was the same - he beat me, and again I basically gave up by about turn 3. Except that I could almost swear by the Garmin record that I actually hit my top speed of over 57km/hr about the time I crossed the pursuit line, only 20m or so from the finish. Which seems bizarre. In fact, the whole thing is a little odd - after jumping from 39-49 in 3 seconds, I then added 1 km/hr per second for the next 8 seconds. With no appreciable difference around the time I felt that I'd given up and stopped controlling my line. Which makes it seem likely that my head had given up, I'd lost focus (partly... mostly? because of being sick and without pizzazz. Or something) without properly informing my body, which for wont of some more definitive direction just kept on pushing until it stopped. But I'm certainly not good enough to win races with that level of commitment, certainly not against someone like Chris Dann.

My second race was against Jonathon Dent, an U17 rider I've never seen before but who qualified as much faster than me as I was to Chris. I had the lead this time, and as last round my plan was to get the pace up, keep it high and have a more steadily-increasing speed drag race rather than a jump from slower speeds. And again, I managed to do that, I controlled the race fairly well. As expected he came past me towards the end of the back straight - but I was prepared for that, and increased my speed, trying to keep him on my hip. I reacted though, rather than just accelerating 20m or so before turn 3, so instead I more or less held him on my shoulder, and coming out of turn 4 we were basically side by side. Not surprisingly, from there he took the win by a wheel or so. At least in that race my focus was much better, and even though the time between races was much shorter than between the F200 and my first race, I felt better.

But that was it for me for the day - not even a free 'win' to boost my tally to 9 points could help, and I was well out of the finals. I had intended to stay to watch the rest of my Splat! and aboc sprint squad team mates race their finals, but I was suddenly overcome very dispirited and demoralised, and so unsociably departed to go home and curl up in bed.

Time to shake off this cold-y flu-y thing, get back on the keto, get back in the bluddy gym and perhaps spend more time on the velo than on the trainer, get more bike handling and power-transferring at speed training in. Just as I'm about to start work again and find my time disappearing. Ah well. Ain'tn't nobody gonna pay me to ride my bike!