So naturally as I roll out for my flying 200, as soon as I get on to the track, before even putting any power down, I pull my wheel - and I'm all strapped in, nowhere near the fence. Fortunately I manage to get enough leverage - with my left foot - to unclip and pull out of the pedal before I topple over. Thank the all-mighty Druw, for now, for 0 degrees of float.
So I went back to the end of the queue, waited for another 15 or so riders, cooled down thoroughly in the strong southerly, and eventually went out again. I was happy with my effort, felt like I jumped at the right point from about the right speed, kept accelerating down the back straight, and held the speed to the line - but only a 13.8 this month. Most times today (except A-grade, who weren't much slower, and Chris Dann, who was faster!) were more than 0.5 seconds slower, so I guess it's okay.
First race I was up against Nic again, and had the lead. I decided to leave him plenty of room, expecting that he would want to jump over the top of me. I was hoping to out-jump him, at least enough to keep him high, but not give him my wheel to sling around as he's done before in training. That didn't quite work, as he jumped out of turn 4 and managed to get past me in to turn 1, so I was on his wheel instead. Perhaps I should have taken height in turn 3? I suspect that would have been too late, so I just tried to come around him. And I almost almost made it, lost by what seemed like a tyre or so. Maybe it was half a wheel, I'm not sure - I was too busy trying to stay upright after pulling my foot off the pedal - strap and all. Somehow not only had the (brand-new. Well, okay, maybe two weeks old) cleat come out of the pedal, but I'd snapped all 4 cable ties that held the strap on to the pedal. I'm still not sure exactly how - I think that my heel may have clipped the chainstay, but I can't be sure. Why though? No idea. Unless in trying to protect my foot and be gentle, I didn't stomp the cleat in to the pedal hard enough and so was never properly clipped in. Impossible to know now. What happened though was that I wrenched my ankle even more, making it hard to even walk. I was not looking forward to my next race against Chris!
Chris had the lead for this one, and I decided to give this whole 'jumping from turn four' business a go. Didn't work though! I didn't really kick hard enough (not because my ankle hurt, but probably partly because I was aware that my ankle was sore. As it were) but in any case I jumped a bit too late to get the best advantage, and Chris (who probably has the better jump of the two of us in any case) held me off to the first corner and, unlike with Nic, I couldn't come around and Chris won easily.
So it was down to the last race against Ben, which was a dead rubber since the finals in 4-man B-Grade were set already, to give me my first win in B-Grade in my 4th round of racing there. I had the lead, and looked to hold the pace at a reasonable level so that I didn't have to jump hard from a low speed. Ben was sitting in right behind me, which makes it harder to see, but at least I didn't have to worry about him having height. He was sitting back a couple of lengths, which meant that I had to watch for him coming up to my wheel with speed. I covered that though, and coming in to turn one I wound the pace up - not a hard jump, but enough to make it hard for Ben to come around. I kept increasing the speed and coming out of turn 4 I had a look around to see Ben still a bike length back - finally, my first win in B!
But I still had to back-up for the 3v4 final, again against Ben. This time it was three laps, and this time Ben had the lead. I was unsure how he was going to play it, but was worried that he might elect to make it a 900-metre pursuit - and that's exactly what he did. I decided to just let it go for the first lap, see what the gap was and how I was feeling before deciding whether to panic or not. As we came up to 2 to go I felt comfortable despite not getting any draft from Ben, and the gap had stabilised to about 5 lengths - enormous, really, but we were only doing 40-odd. So I reassured myself that not jumping after him was the best thing to do, and worked on steadily increasing my pace. I was briefly uncertain coming up to one lap to go as the gap was still about 3 lengths and I was gearing myself up for an actual sprint, but as we closed upon the 200m line I could see that it wouldn't be necessary, as Ben was clearly flagging. After passing I had a quick look back and saw that he hadn't kicked again to get on my wheel, so I just rolled on with one more quick glance to be sure coming out of turn 4 before sitting up to roll over for third - my second win in B, and first podium! Sure, it was a tiny field in B, but third is third, damnit!
What is there to learn? Well, I probably shouldn't have left Nic quite so much room, I doubt he needed so big an invitation to jump. Still, it could almost as easily have been a win. Chris, well, I feel like I can beat him (at least sometimes!), but I haven't managed it in a race as yet. A combination of imperfect tactics and insufficient power application. Ben, well, it's a different set of tactics to an all-out sprint, and I managed to work it well both times, so that's something to be happy about at least.
A couple of months now before there's any more sprints - more SSS, and perhaps Vic Masters? It's a season goal, but given that I'll be racing against other Masters like Neil, and possibly Dino and Chris Ray depending on what entries are like, I'm not anywhere near the level of looking at medals. But then, goals aren't necessarily for the achieving so much as for their utility in driving training!
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