Return to racing - one week out!

I went to start a post a week ago, and then I completely forgot... anyway, just one more week to the first round of the Summer Sprint Series, and I'm all set to go!

Well, I have my licence. I've got the one cog which was on my bike all these years - the others are, presumably, in a box somewhere. If I can't find them I guess I'm racing on... whatever gear is on there, I haven't actually checked. So... I'm kinda set to go. I've ridden my track bike twice, and even did a flying 200 or 2:

There's a keirin series starting this week at Blackburn, which'd be good, but I'm not ready for that yet - haven't done enough work to be sufficiently confident in my skills with more than one person on the track yet. Don't want to potentially be a danger to others.

I'm not going to be particularly fast. I'm waaaay overweight. But I anticipate that it'll be fun, and that's plenty for me!

SSS Round 2 2012-13

Well, I won't claim that it was quite as much fun as last round, but it was still a fun day. Qualified on 102" and actually managed a PB at Blackburn of 13.515 in favourable conditions featuring a Northerly pushing everyone down the back straight. Again, on the back of not much training, and not having been on the track bike since last round. Interesting. And I could have gone faster, but as usual my jump wasn't quite as hard as it can be, and my riding not as smooth. See: training.

Racing I dropped back to... 94" I think. Put a 14t on instead of the 13t, anyway. I'd actually qualified second fastest in B grade, to my surprise, so everyone I raced had actually qualified slower than me! I can't remember when that last happened, and it hadn't happened in B.

Doesn't mean I beat everyone though. Or, to put a slightly finer point on it, anyone! First race against Chris Dann - never beaten him. Still hadn't! I had the lead, but somewhat invited him to take it through turn 3 on the first lap - I took height, and with him down on the blue, wasn't too concerned that he'd jump from there. He didn't, but did take the lead, and we rolled around slowly increasing the pace. I looked for an opportunity to dive underneath him through turn one, and probably could have done, but didn't quite have the nerve/training. So we actually jumped with me a bike length behind out of turn 2, 200m to go, me with the advantage of height. I really should have beaten him from there, even though he has a better kick. But I didn't, and wasn't even close.

Second race, up against Kallum Parlivliet, I was following and after half a lap, decided to force the pace, not wanting to let him jump from a crawl. So I rolled up outside him, and he let me, climbing up behind me and then jumping out of turn 4. It wasn't a super hard jump, and I came down easily into his draft and flowed him around. I then did the dinkiest little break and run you've ever seen, just as he was accelerating in to the back straight (as he always does) which gained me virtually nothing. And then I just sat in his draft the rest of the way, like a... hmm.

Third race, Nick Abels, under 17 but big and strong. I'd considered going more or less from the gun, but figured I'd never be able to outlast him, even if it didn't suit him either. Instead he started accelerating around the pursuit line on the back straight in the first lap, and I sat beside him through to turn one, where I dropped back in to the draft. I stayed there, popping out momentarily (and not really entirely intentionally) in to turn 3, just because I stuffed the entry up, and rolled in behind. We didn't even really properly sprint. I was getting the distinct impression by this point that I'd already decided going in to the day that it was another practice run of sorts (which it was) and that I wasn't even trying to win (which is what ended up happening, even though I hadn't deliberately intended it that way.)

But that didn't matter, because in a field of 6, you don't go around losing all of your races and get in to the finals, do you? I was already getting changed when they announced I was racing the 3v4 final against Chris. Turns out that three people had won all of their races, and three had lost them all - and as the second-fastest qualifier, that meant that I was in (because Jarrod, the fastest qualifier, had injured his knee.)

So out I went, wondering what on Earth I was doing, and what I should do. Chris had the lead, and we did a bit of weaving and so on back and forth before we jumped, side by side, out of turn 4. As has happened before, Chris made it to turn 1 first, and I slotted in behind. And then I got the weirdest target-fixation ever. I was staring at his back wheel, not even glancing up, and when we got to turn 3, I wasn't at all prepared. I slammed in to the turn, flew up to the blue and it was over. Mind you, had I taken the turn flawlessly, I probably would have ended up finishing in exactly the same spot as I'd been at the entry to the turn - a foot from Chris' rear tyre. It was bizarre, I've never had that happen before, though I do get rather tunnel-visioned during a flying 200 - but, if I say so myself, I ride turn 3/4 at Blackburn near flawlessly. Generally speaking I barely get above the black, never mind the red. Okay, perhaps flawlessly is stretching things a bit. But I certainly don't let it throw me up in a F200.

So tactically and so on, obviously my racing was poor. My endurance was also non-existent, which was a problem not because of long drag races, but because I didn't feel that I could accelerate down the back straight. And mentally I wasn't well race-tuned. But I still had an enjoyable day, and clearly the strength/speed is still pretty good - though I can go faster. I wonder what the solution could be. Track training? Spin? Nah, don't be silly, how would those help?

Blackburn velo... yeah, I remember that place!

So I finally got out on to the velo for a refamiliarisation session - hardly call it a training session as such. Took everything, including spare tyres, but somehow managed to forget the chain whip, so did it all on 86". Probably not a bad idea anyway, perhaps I should restrict myself to that for the first round, too.

Nothing too exciting - a lot of rolling around, two powerjumps from... 23km/hr, apparently, a flying 200 from the chute, and a practice match sprint against Dave Thomas, just for the fun of it all.

Powerjumps were okay, hit 46 on the 1/4ish lap jump, and 53 on the 1/2ish lap jump, not too bad. Flying 200 was marred slightly by slipping out of the pedal, just held in by the strap - need to get new cleats, clearly. Still managed some decent power, though it wasn't a strong jump, and hit a top of 58km/hr for, at a wild and random guess, something like a 13.5. But man, the error bars on that one go right off the graph...

The track needs a bit of a clean up - I'll try to get down there again on Thursday with a whippersnipper - but otherwise it felt great, nice and smooth and somehow grippier than I remember. All the work that's been put in has clearly paid off! It was good to be back out there, and I'm looking forward to Sunday. I'm not expecting much, particularly, but if I manage to enjoy myself I'll be content, and it'll give me a good baseline for the rest of the season.

BBN #2 for summer (well, late spring really)

Halfway to the track tonight it suddenly occurred to me that attempting to ride without pedals would not be terribly successful. So I ended up arriving at my traditional time of Late, with a hurried couple of laps and a powerjump before the frivolities started in earnest.

First up - I really need a 96" for Blackburn. I rode 92" this afternoon, except for the sprint at the end on 86", and it feels a little too small. 99" on Blackburn is still probably a little large for me when there's wind (ie: usually) and 96" is kinda in the middle there. Have to order a 50t... I know I said I was going to do that already, but I haven't had a chance to budget - and with Christmas coming up, budgetting is a scary, scary thing...

Anyway, started off with a couple of 'paired' Flying 200s, in threes. I lead out the first one, and... that's about all I know. Noone came past. Garmin tells me the max was 52.8, but I forgot to turn the GPS off, so it also tells me I did a lot of riding in the carpark, playground and neighbouring ovals so I don't think I'll pay much attention to it. Especially since I also apparently recorded a cadence of 237.

Second 200 I was in the second spot, and spent the last 50 metres or so before the jump trying to avoid the wheel in front - I kept thinking it was jumping, jumping, jumping... in the end the jump came just a bit before the 200 line, so didn't really have a chance to drop the wheel and so on. Instead I let a little gap open to run in to and around, and that worked well enough. I dropped back down in to the lane and eased up coming to the line, only to hear a last-minute rush on my outside as the rider in third closed in. I held him off, and so won the adulation of crickets and balloons everywhere.

Next up we were practising a common move at Blackburn - jumping from the exit of corner 4 with about 350m to go. First one went fine, though I could hear a strange clicking sound coming from underneath me somewhere by the end. Sensibly, I ignored it and just lay my bike down in between efforts, before realising during the wind-up for the next that it was my cadence magnet hitting the sensor - I must have pulled the wheel ever so slightly in my previous matchup. This time I was against Chris, who out-jumped me down the straight and then refused to stop pedalling so that I could get back around him. After getting off the bike I noticed that the tyre was actually rubbing - not quite enough to drag, but enough that it couldn't be spun more than half a revolution.

So I fixed that, changed gears, and rocked back in for another sprint against Nic - we were, of course, both entirely spent. This time though I managed to actually jump out of turn two, pull ahead of him down the back straight and drop in to the lane to take the win, which was nice - I'd been telling myself that I wasn't going to do what I did last week and simply give in to feeling tired, but to go as hard as possible anyway, so pleased that I managed that.

I also managed, on every jump but one, to pull my left cleat out of the pedal - thank FSM for straps. Not sure an OS delivery will get here in time for this weekend, so might have to pay double and source that one locally...

Brief stats and humorous map here.

ABOC Summer #2 with DISC

Or something like that. After yesterdays spinning 'warmup' I felt in a reasonable place for a bit of sprinting action. First up we did some powerjumps on (for me) 86", 2 x 3/4 lap. I lead out the first one with Dino, jumped at the 200 line from mid-30s and sprinted to the line unchallenged. Second one I was in second position and followed Dino's jump down the back straight. Here I was in a good sort of position to go around him, but I just haven't been able to get that move right, and I came out of his draft and just sat there, finishing a bike length back - right where I started!

After that we went up to race gear, 99", and did a motorpaced entry + 150m. I jumped poorly, but still managed to hit 61.4 coming out of turn 2, but couldn't quite hold that down the back straight, dropping back to about 57 which I held to the end.

Partnered Flying 200s, and I lead out the first against Craig. The jump again was ordinary, and I rather dove down in to the lane before the 200 line rather than smoothly coming down and still up around the red line at that point. I actually accelerated down the back straight this time, up to around 57 from 55, and held that to the line pretty well. The next one was similar, following Craig this time, except that I was meant to lay off coming out of turn two, take height, run down in to the slipstream and around. Again I got it wrong, not taking enough space and rather diving back down behind him leaving me with not much of a run. So I pulled back out too sharply, got stuck on his hip and couldn't pull past. Marginally closer than with Dino, but not much!

We finished with another 1.5 lap match sprint, and I was up against Jarrod this time. I was behind him, and had plenty of height when he went with about a lap to go. I was half intending to practice the laying off again, but I just plain had too much speed and muscled around him instead. So not quite the right sort of practice.

One thing that's become enormously more apparent as I've gotten stronger in the gym and on the trainer is that that's not really being transferred to the track very well. I'm almost scared jumping for a flying 200 because my bike handling just isn't good enough, especially at DISC. Or, at least, I've convinced myself that this is so. And I did hit the fence with my foot winding up for the second 200. I don't have a power meter, but I reckon if I did it'd show that I was down a good 10% at least in my jumps compared to on the trainer, and quite possibly more (I mean, I've never trained with power, so I can't really quantify. But you get the idea.) Simply because I'm lacking in confidence and skill. More training I guess! And at least BBN isn't quite so slippery...

BBN Numero the One for Summer

So, I may have turned up a trifle late. Again. Again I had an excuse - my daughter's school Spring Fair. And it should all be over now. Probably Maybe.

Anyway, did a couple of 1/4 lap powerjumps on my own on 86" as warmup. Not bad, hit a top of 46.5, over 77m as opposed to the 62.5 of DISC. Next up I went up to 99" against Chris Dann for a 3/4lap powerjump - a good 230m or so. I was on the inside, jumping from 35km/hr or so, hit a top of 54.5 some 30m from the line, and crossed at about 52.6 after pulling away from Chris through turn 3.

We then moved on to Flying 200s in pairs, and the first one Chris lead out and took his revenge - I wasn't recovered very well from the powerjump, and after giving myself a bit of space coming out of the jump, just couldn't manage to increase my pace coming around him and basically gave up by turn 4, coasting in behind him, almost coming undone by going underneath him because he slowed coming in to the straight when I expected him to pull away, before remembering that we don't go that way and swinging back up the track. After a bit of rest, I lead out the next one and managed to hold him off, hitting a top of 55.3 and crossing the line, according to my Garmin, at about 28.2km/hr. Amusing things happen on the velodrome with GPS enabled.

Finally it was a 1.5 lap match sprint against Emily, back down to 86". She was (nominally) leading, and watching carefully. I looked for any gaps, thinking about taking an early jump, but was content to leave it later so long as the pace was high enough, and we were tracking about 30 so that was okay. I drew up next to her coming in to turn 1 on the last lap and jumped with the advantage of height. I wasn't quite able to draw past her, though I probably could have dropped down in to the lane by the end of the back straight, but I'm not quite confident about that yet. As it was, after slipping a couple of times up on the blue line, I ran really wide coming out of turn 4 and only just hung on to beat her, hitting a top of just over 55km/hr.

I'm pretty happy with that training, having had a very busy and tiring weekend. Granted, I was training with people who (by Round 1 F200 times) are a bit slower than me, so I could have hit precisely the same numbers and lost each match-up against, say, Nic. But overall it felt pretty good, I was marginally less clueless than in the afore-mentioned Round 1, and I'm feeling happier with not just my jump, but accelerating in the middle of the race, down the back straight and coming out of turn 4. Hopefully Round 2 will be more successful than Round 1...

DISC Summer #1 with ABOC

Nice to get back on the track today after lots of spinning and lifting. I was on standby as support for Team Splat!'s Around the Bay epic which left me rather late getting to DISC, and without a partner for powerjumps when he defected to the enduro stream!

Accelerations generally felt a bit soft tonight, especially on 86" but even up on 99". My body just didn't feel right. I hit about 43km/hr in each 1/4 lap powerjump on 86", but felt like I should have been able to get higher.

The next drill was a F150 with a motorpaced entry on 99". I was pretty happy with this despite the sloppy jump, it felt fast and was - an average speed for the 150m of 60.47 with a top of 62.4 after crossing the 200 line at about 59. In fact, even though it was only a 150m effort, my average speed for the 200 (approx!) was still 59.5 - or only just over 12 seconds. Of course, that's with a motorpaced windup and entry, so even though the 150m was unassisted, doesn't quite mean it equates to an actual 12s F200, even at DISC! Still, nice to go fast.

After that, a full F200 though motorpaced the entire way this time. Again my jump was poor, and I came down off the fence too early, but speed was good - crossed the line at about 55, and accelerated all the way, crossing the line at about 61 (and still accelerating!) for an average of 59km/hr, about a 12.2 or so. All I need to do now is to organise a motorbike for my races...

For the first time in ages (well, a month or so) we did a windout, back on 86" (one day I'll get a new chain so I can go down to 82"... one day). Got up to 61.6 on that, which is a pretty decent effort. I don't have my cadence sensor at the moment, but it would have been up around 150 or so.

Finished off the evening with a practice match sprint - again, I didn't have a partner, but this time I formed a group of three with Merv and someone I don't know. Merv took the lead and I was initially at the back, but moved up through the middle, keeping height. Merv jumped from the bottom with about 300m to go while I stayed up the bank, accelerating and watching the other rider behind me. I saw that he wasn't going to come underneath, so I just dropped down around the 200 line a couple of lengths back, accelerated down the back straight and came up beside Merv just before the turn, held him there, then pulled away to win. Which, all respect to Merv, with my speed I should be able to do, though he's a better rider than I am.

Wreaking my rewen-ge

Turns out I was supposed to do a repeat of the recovery spin today, but I didn't check my email so instead I popped by BBN for a bit of redress. Maybe it's difficult to actually wreak rewen-ge on a concrete track, but not so difficult to do to oneself!

I was momentarily thrown off plan by happening to bump in to the same chap from back in April - who's bought a new track bike and is looking for some racing! So it was nice to chat, but I really wanted to get out there. I was trialling straps on my pedals for the first time - they felt good when on (though they're only cheapies, so I don't know how long they'll last) but getting in and out of them is going to take some practice!

Anyway, after a bit of a warmup I did a couple of half-lap powerjumps (which at BBN is... well, about 165-odd metres, because I went from pursuit line to finish line) on 86", hitting only 50.9 on the effort from ~30km/hr. Bit low, I thought. I then switched up to 99" and did the same, from ~10km/hr and ~30km/hr. Hit 52 this time from 30, which again, felt a bit low. Not by an order of magnitude or anything, but still. Enough to make me concerned that perhaps I wasn't going to make much headway on looking for an improved F200 time.

But I headed out from the chute, and wound it up over the abridged BBN F200 distance. On Sunday I jumped late from... actually, it's hard to tell! Certainly above 40. But it's a rather gentle 'jump' in the garmin record. I crossed the line at about 49 and eventually hit a max of  54.5km/hr before gracefully curving back down to 51kmh, for a time of 14.185 at an average of 50.76km/hr. I don't have such precise timings, of course, for today and a direct comparison is meaningless because of the different conditions - there was all but no wind today, for example. But I can say that I jumped from just on 35km/hr, crossed the 200 line doing pretty much smack on 50km/hr, hit a max of 55.3km/hr (and held above 55km/hr for 5 seconds or so) which decayed back to ~51 again by the time I crossed the finish line to record an average speed of conservatively 52.99km/hr, generously 53.67km/hr and most likely 53.5km/hr. Which makes for a F200 time of somewhere between 13.587 and 13.415 seconds.

That's still a little slower than I'd be happy with. But I'm much more satisfied with that as a measure of where I am than with what I managed on Sunday, conditions notwithstanding. And there's useful info there, too - accelerating after the line is okay, but by 5km/hr? Probably a bit much. So jump should probably have started earlier - more like the start of the clubrooms, perhaps. The question, of course, is could I hold the speed all the way to the line in that case. Crossing the 200 line at something closer to 52 and holding the same sort of pace as in today's F200 to the line would see me riding something more like a 13.28. Which is closer to where I feel I should be at the moment. Wouldn't necessarily mean I'd win any more races, because there's a whole lot more to it than speed over 200 metres, but it's a start!

DISC Session #23 with ABOC

Hmm... what to say? Half-lap seated powerjumps hit a maximum of 53.4 on 86" against Nic, not bad. Motorpaced entry + 150m was okay, hit a max of 61.2 on 99" despite a bad jump and entry line, lifting my front wheel off the ground by quite a bit. Was still just below 60 crossing the line, so pleased with that.

Partnered Flying 200s I was feeling a bit tired already, and only hit a max of 57.1 when I had the lead. I followed on the next and tried to pass Nic, but got just about all of it wrong - left too much of a gap on the entry, closed in on the back straight but not quickly enough, swung up once already on the bend, came back, then came back out of the draft way too late... my tactical prowess is not extreme!

We finished off the session with a 1.5 lap match sprint - did this three-up with Nic and Neil for the fun of it. Nic led it out, Neil behind me. I tried to keep height, Nic came up to about the blue, and both Neil and I went for the lane at the same time with a lap to go. I got there first with only a moderate jump, hoping to keep increasing my speed all the way to the line. Neil came past me in the end, but only by half a wheel (all you need, of course!) but I was happy enough with the effort.

DISC Session #21 with ABOC

Whoops! Bit late for this one, and full of lunch still. Ah well, never mind. Powerjumps and flying 200s with an attempt to pass the leading rider. Powerjumps were fine, very jumpy, marginally powerful. Got up to 4km/hr on the second one on 92", good result.

Edit: 45km/hr! Not 4km/hr. That was not, in fact, an effort to disguise my abilities so as to lull my SSS opponents in to a false sense of security. I'm not that clever. Just typlexic.

Flying 200s the idea was that the following rider laid off, built speed and blasted past the lead rider to take the victory on the line. I was with Carl, and for the first effort the plan didn't quite work, as the trailing rider mistimed his effort and didn't quite get past the lead rider. In the second effort, the trailing rider rode perfectly, passing the lead rider about 10m before the line.

I'll leave it up to the imagination of the reader to determine who was which when!

End of the night, I was rooted. Still rooted from spin on Friday, actually. And, as predicted, this week's spin is even harder. Sigh. I'm sure it'll pay off...

Blackburn Sprint Night at DISC

Well, I intended to race, really I did, but... well, having been away from home all week, my heart just wasn't in it and though I showed up and did my Flying 200, I couldn't bear hanging around for another two hours when I just wanted to be home with my family.

Another part of it was that the Flying 200 felt awful. Really bad. I did it on 92", which didn't quite feel right, but mostly because I just wasn't focussed on it - and so my jump, my form, and my ability to push the whole way just weren't there. So I didn't feel I was going to get much of a training effect out of the evening. Because, well, I'm a sprinter; there's no point going out there at 60%. And as Craig Colduck said:

If you don't make the target times or loads on the first effort or set, you warm down and go home. You aren't fresh enough to train at a level that will make you improve.

I didn't check my time after the Flying 200, but I knew in myself that I wasn't on. My goal had been a sub-13 second. I felt like I'd just scraped in a sub-30 second!

Interestingly, I was right in a technical sense - I hadn't made my target. It may be argued that aiming for a 0.4second PB shouldn't be an initial training target in this sense, but no need to quibble. It turned out I rode 13.34 seconds - which is precisely (where 'precisely' in this, hand-timed, context means 'within 0.2s or so') what I rode at the come-n-try day 10 weeks or so ago. So I actually qualified to go home on the other half of Craig's advice:

If you do a PB, you warm down and go home.

So even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't possibly have stayed!

One interesting thing to note from the stats is that I started my jump for the F200 from ~42.4km/hr, hit the 200m line at about 54.7, hit my top of 57.1 (@131RPM) some 20m later, and then dribbled all the way back down to 54.9 over the next 60m, popped back up to 55.7 and held there for another 60m or so, and then plummeted away after coming out of the bend (in fact, I almost sat up in the straight) to cross the line at about 52.7km/hr. This is all slightly approximate, of course, as I'm inferring from the graph rather than correlating with a GPS plot, but it's probably about right.