musings on the tour & wed night racing

I am sure I could write about all the tour drama, but I will save that for jerry springer. All I have to say is it totally blows. I think to become a pro, people should have to display the quality of knowing how to lose and handle it well. Some people are bad losers. Me, I love to get a new asshole ripped open for me. Maybe I am bummed for a little bit, but really performance has nothing to do with me as a person. If people felt comfortable losing with class - while of course working as hard as they can to win - there would be less temptation to cheat. ( Of course for the pros- money, livelihood, pressure from team, "everyone is doing it" all play a part as well.) Rasmussen showed he had very little class when he trash talked his teammate to the press. Trash talking competitors is bad enough, teammates worse, and to the press worse still. If you don't respect what others are doing, you have no problem disrespecting them by giving yourself an unfair advantage. He clearly is very insecure and insecure people are the most likely to resort to doping, as they don't believe in their natural ability/training, and/or have a sense of self-worth tied to winning. My mom always said it best to me: "Beth, there will always be someone better than you." Perhaps people might think telling your child that after a good performance in school or sports is odd, but taught me to reality check at a young age and to really respect competitors. Well, I guess I had more to say that I intended.

Speaking of losing-- Wednesday night racing at the track!

Well, I actually didn't lose, I think I won my omnium...but that it certainly felt like I lost cause I wasn't so happy with how I rode some of the races.

Points Race. 12 laps, sprints every 3. I need to learn to warm up. I totally missed a jump at the beginning cause I was positioned bad, was just sucking on the sprints, and not riding the right wheels. I should have tried to jump early and break away, but my head was in my ass the whole race. Luckily, I managed to score points every sprint. I think I place 2nd in this race, just cause the points were spreading out amongst people, not cause I rode well.

Scratch Race. 10 laps. This was better. Head was kinda coming out of my ass. It felt slow. I attacked on lap 9. Broke away a bit with some other dude. Then he took a pull, then the field bunched up again. I attacked again. Then he took a pull and we bunched up again. I may have attacked a third time, but then I decided I'd just sprint it out at the finish cause things were slowing down when I stopped pulling and would bunch up. That is my own fault for making crappy attacks-- I wasn't accelerating quick enough to get big enough gaps. Anyway, I was on this tall dudes wheel for the last lap. I timed it pretty good- he just rode me around and didn't even try to pull off or get away from me. I started my sprint in the middle of the last turn and beat him at the line for 1st. Cool I won, but I wish I was better in my attacks.

Miss 'n Out. This is becoming my favorite race. Funny, cause I sucked at it the first time. I just rode wheels the whole time on the outside. Then we were down to three. The dude from the scratch race was in front after the neutral lap. I was planning on doing the same thing as in the scratch race, but I already knew I could beat him short, so i thought I would try to beat him long. So at the first curve on I passed him, made a gap on the back stretch and held it to the finish. This was a really good long sprint. Someone told me when I wound it up, I was sprinting really smooth. This made me glad. This was my best race of the night.

B/C Points Race. 25 laps, sprints every 5. Last week I scored points in this race. The week before I hung in. This week i got dropped...after lap 11. I was pissed at myself for getting dropped--especially cause I've hung in there previous weeks. I was in no mans land, and just TTed the rest as a 15 lap punishment! :) Everyone said that was the fastest B/C points race this year, so that was good to know, but I wish I'd have done a bit better.

Well, that was Wednesday night. I think next week I will try to move up the C1 group. (Any thoughts?) Pace didn't feel difficult last night, but that is just cause I am comparing it to the weekend where my ass got lit on fire by all the pros! Anyway, the last two weeks I've done pretty well and think it will be a good challenge to have to work to be in the middle of the pack.

On the ups - I did my quad measurement when I got home-- ready? 60cm. That is .5 cm bigger. Of course, perhaps my measuring is faulty/inconsistent-- or maybe seeing Jennie Reeds quads made mine want to grow bigger.