Well this was the big race of the year for me. It was originally scheduled for some time in August, but due to a lack of certain-level officials, Alan had to cancel. I stepped up to take over promoting after Eric R talked to some of the t-town officials who agreed to Sept 15. This was the only day in their schedule they were free so it'd have to work. Alan had assured me that promoting would in no way affect my racing, which I believed. Boy was I wrong. Don't promote your A races, people.
A short time before states, I realized that the schedule Alan set up for me was a little wonky. The first event was the team sprint, which meant that people had to quickly come up with teams on the fly without having any metrics for other riders' abilities. This momentary chaos did give us a chance to let the officials figure out how to use the fancy score keeping spreadsheet that Alan usually uses. The next moment of chaos came when we realized the team sprints were being done in order of sign up instead of the category start order that was posted on the schedule. This meant that Karl had no clue that we were up, and had to get ready quickly. Josh and I lined up and waited for Karl. Dave the official said he didn't have time to wait, so one of us would have to do two laps or forfeit the ride. I said sure, why not, but somehow I lost my balance and fell over right before the start, which gave Karl enough time to get over and ready for the start. Funny how those things happen. Karl and I knew our big team to beat was Kieran's kissena team, which we overheard we were able to do. They had a bit of a split up at the start that they didn't recover from. Our team integrated nicely and felt fast the whole way around. I tried looking for our opposite team while riding, which was a composite team of Al, Lucas, and Dan Lim. Turns out they just edged us out for the win. I wish I had known because I'm sure I could have dug a little deeper. Our final time was 1:26.60
Next up was the kilo. I rode hard for a 1:14.65, which was the third fastest time behind Kieran and Karl. Those of you who know standard Kissena times probably have realized by now that this year was screaming fast. I don't know if it was the timers, the weather, or what, but I haven't seen that many sub 1:15 kilos and well below 1:30 team sprints ever before.
The third race was a 25 lap points race. I tried to attack from the gun to see if I could either get some solid early points or preferably connect with another strong rider or two and take a lap. It didn't happen and I fizzled out. After the second sprint, a group of four got off the front who did eventually lap the field. I didn't really end up doing anything noteworthy, which put me in last place. This basically put me out of contention for states, which was fine by me because this is when shit really hit the fan promoting-wise.
The kilos, 500s, and team sprints took up over half the day, which meant we were running well behind schedule. This meant we might have to cut an event. We decided right away that flying 200s would have to go, as that would take another hour alone. This angered the sprinters, who are an emotional bunch. Then right after my buddy Randy the EMT left, there was a touch of wheels and Mike P went down cracking his collarbone. This put us further behind schedule which meant we'd have to scrap all but the championship rounds of sprints. This really angered the sprinters, most of which weren't even NYS residents.
So then I had to do a scratch race. By this point I had thrown my helmet down in complete disgust with how my event was going, which naturally cracked it. I still rode with it anyhow. In fact, I'm still riding with that helmet. Since I was basically out of contention and partially out of my mind, I spent the race attacking and venting my anger and frustration. Somehow despite completely wasting myself, I still came in fifth.
The final race for the 1/2/3 combined field was the match sprints. We decided to run them based on top kilo times, but since this excluded last year's state champ Al, who was very close in points to both Karl and Kieran, I opted out as the third seed. Kieran unsurprisingly beat out both of them to win the overall, but Karl and Al gave him hell, with Karl only being one omnium point down.
I then spent another hour or more sorting through results, handing out medals, cleaning the track, packing away gear, and vowing to never promote a race again.
And that was state championships. At least I didn't get stuck with second place again.
Results:
http://kissenavelodrome.info/results/2013/NewYorkStateChampionships.pdf
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment