BVC Friday NIght racing - B Group 2nd in scratch

Well the Computrainer and weekly track interval sessions seem to be paying off.

Last night we had three races in the B Group. Elimination and then a 4x5 points race. It was a huge 21 rider start, and I just didn't really get going in the Elimination. And the 4x5 just started with an immediate acceleration to +50kmph, before I could get my heart rate up and my legs moving I was spit out the back :-) Just for fun I jumped back in and managed to stay between the breakaway riders and the rest of the field till the end of the race...

The last race was a 40 lap scratch. Much more my type of race. Started easy and built up speed. Just stayed at the back of the big field as attrition worked to my favor. Was near the front with about 14 laps to go.. David Stevens and Adam Barlev jumped off the front, I followed and got on their wheel. We had about 12 laps to go with almost a half lap gap. We took half lap pulls staying well off the front. With two laps to go we jockeyed about a bit. With David Stevens getting the best position behind and above while I was leading out (bad planning on my part...) I moved him up track by going to the blue. He went, I followed. I almost got it at the line, missed by a few centimeters.

Final sprint was about 25 seconds, 600 watts average, speed started at 43kmh, hit 59.4 and averaged 51.6.. Still not quite back to my best results last winter. But definitely an improvement of the dismal and best forgotten 2009 Fall series :-)

There was a bad crash in our first B race. With Scott Jutson, Jasmin Glasser and a couple of other people going down hard coming out of turn one. Almost taking out some bystanders as they slid across the Cote d'azur. Email from Scott today say's he is in hospital waiting to get a pin or plate for a broken collarbone. Sounds similar to my break two years ago.

BVC Friday NIght racing - winter series started

Last week was the BVC Maximum Entry weekend series... Total bust up.... I was tired, TSB negative and was racing on my training wheels (mega-spoke mavix with Tufo tubular...) Legs felt like lead pushing a concrete bike around... Only did two races on Saturday... One in the B group and then one with the C's (to get the number of B's down to 20, I was going so slow anyway...) And then I had a flat on the training wheel in the C race so didn't even race on Sunday. Just did the results.

Friday was the first night of the Winter Friday night track series. Felt a lot better... Had the disc back with a new Vittoria tubular.. The B group had a huge turnout, full field of 20 riders Did the first two races, 30 lap scratch and 4x5 Win and Out just cruising using a 52x15 (90.5") gear. Switched to 51x14 (95") for the last race, 4x10 Points. That felt a lot better. Managed to take fourth by taking the second sprint. Same old same old, big jump over the field, push the big gear, get a huge gap with about 3 laps to go. Then just ride it through.

As always, huge difference in racing success once I get back into the big gear. Although it also needs legs that can turn it minimally.

Other than that I have been attempting with some success to push CTL back up with copious amounts of L2/L3 on the Computrainer. From a low of 44 in early December I'm now (today) back to 60.

Spring Series is only about eight weeks away....