Alright, the race came and went, and now it is finally time to sit down, consult the garmin data and write up a race report. The weather could be described best as "perfect". Low 70's I believe, with light winds both days. The second day actually had little to no wind for a while. There was a threat of rain for saturday, but fortunately it held off except for a couple of drops during one or two races.
Saturday: the day started off with the Kilo. I was planning on running a higher gear this year - 90". After warming up in my 83" gear though, I started second guessing myself. For some reason it just seemed really hard to turn over. I switched to the 90" anyhow and just resolved myself to potentially blow up completely. As it turns out, turning the gear over ended up fine and I was able to hold a pretty consistent cadence to the end to bring in a time of 1:17.41, which is almost a second faster than last year's opening weekend time of 1:18.28.
Next was the Team Sprint, which I did with Siraaj and Andy. Since Siraaj was trying to stay fresh for match sprints, he went first, Andy second and I was the anchor. All in all I think our team did pretty well for having never done this event together before. Siraaj had a smooth start and got up to speed quick, Andy was able to hold on for the second lap, and I powered my way home. The winds were definitely picking up a bit during this event as both Andy and I got blown up track a little on turn 2 one of the times around. We finished with a 1:31.33, which was enough for first place.
Afterward was a Points race. My original strategy was for Andy to lead me out before the first sprint, then try to stay off the front to certain victory. Needless to say that didn't happen. In fact, I don't really remember what did happen, but it involved me mostly riding semi-smart and winning the first two sprints (pretty sure that happened at least) and then second at the last sprint. This left me in first for that and first overall for the first day. That is a massive use of the word first.
Sunday: Sunday started out with me being dehydrated and sluggish from a combination of the previous day's racing and drinking with my friend the night before. The first race was a scratch. My parents watched, which was nice. Since I was a marked man, I ended up sucking a lot of wind up front, but that's alright. The nature of the game. In the end, I came in second.
EDIT: almost forgot, there was a coffee prime. I won. hooray coffee!
Afterward was the qualifying round of Match Sprints. I narrowly managed to not have to deal with racing the repechage with a well timed bike throw. I think it was my favorite match sprint yet.
Open track time, followed by a Miss&Out. Since there were only 7 cat4's at the track for day two, and since one of them was Siraaj who wanted to stay fresh for the rest of match sprints, the miss and out was only 6 laps long. Managed to pip Brean at the line with a stealthy attack.
More open track time, followed by the semi-finals for sprints. I gave it to Steve to help him gain some omnium points. It's amazing how much easier sprinting is when the outcome has already been decided. We made it look good though.
Finally there was the Finals for the sprints. In my case, I was up against Brean for 3rd place. He got the obligation to lead, I sat right on his wheel until he looked away for a second. Attacked, got a gap, you know the drill.
Conclusion: All in all, I won a bunch of races, won some bags of coffee, had a good time. Still haven't beat my season goal of a 1:16.5 kilo. Might have to go to T-town for that.
