Preamble

3-2 weeks out from this I had the flu which meant I could not breathe properly.  Any hard effort resulted in aching teeth and if I pushed myself to the limit, lots of coughing followed by no energy.  This made for some sad commutes and I missed the omnium due to my meat bag body.

I’d done some legs weights in the week preceding the GP and a migraine on Wednesday and Friday meant I had some forced tapering.  According to the power meter on my commuting bike, I’d hooned home at an average of 333W on Thursday, so perhaps I’d ride well this weekend.

750m Individual Time Trial (3 laps) 49 x 14 (94.5)

In a nice change, rather than being in the first heat, I was in the last.  Being able to see the times of all but one of the other riders was good.  Not that a strong time by anyone else would enable me to go that little bit harder.  I botched the start and duck boarded it before recovering. Here the plan was to PB.  The ride went to plan, and as a bonus I was awarded the solver medal in the Masters 1-4 event (actually it was Masters 3-4 based on those in it) as the Masters 2 rider got to do his own event and ITT for 1km.

My legs were feeling good post race.

Qualifying 3000m Pursuit (12 laps) 49 x 14 (94.5)

I woke with sore thighs and during my warmup, my glutes were feeling like they’d been knifed.  Not a good sign.  My main interest in this event was CF who I had no data on. It looked like he was a fast rider.  He wound up scratching.  What was meant to be a solo qualifying ride for me turned into a qualifier with the remaining rider AS, who historically, I was faster than.  Here I ducked boarded again (I traced that to looking at the count down timer, rather than looking ahead.

With 7 laps to go, my legs were screaming and I was contemplating taking it easy so I had some legs left for the final.  With 3 to go, I started to make ground on AS and qualified first with loads of room in the end.  Front straight to me.

Gold Race 3000m Pursuit (12 laps) 49 x 15 (88.2)

Thanks to my tired and sore legs, I exchanged my 14 tooth cog for a 15, so down to an 88.2.  This time around, I nailed the start as I looked forward up the track.  I stayed out of the saddle until the second bend then transitioned to TT mode.  AS had a jump on me.  The same thing happened last year.  I checked the timing board out each lap from the corner of my eyes and saw I was slowly pulling his 1 second lead back.  With 7 to go, I moaned internally. Not even half way?  Argh.  From there it was check the board, dig deep, checked the board, stay in front.  About half way in I hit the lead and hoped I’d not lose it.  I did not.  With 2 to go, I dug deeper and actually managed to pick the pace up the last lap.  So, either I could have gone faster, or the adrenaline boosted me.  End result was a slightly faster ride than my qualifier, perhaps my 2nd (or third) slowest pursuit time and my first ever gold.  It would have been nice to have more riders to go up against.

The weekend’s race breakdown

My heart rate’s still a bit unresponsive and my power readings for the second race are a bit sparse.  The recording interval was set to 5 seconds.  Next time I’ll alter it to gather a data point every second.

Stats for the day (Sunday)

CTL: 86
ATL: 65

TSB: 21

Intensity Factor: n/a

TSS: n/a

TRiMP: n/a

Thanks to my sponsor, me, Yeatman.

Official Results – Day 1.

Official Results – Day 2.

Bike Porn #1

Bike Porn #2

Ye-olde Minoura Mag trainer

Bodgy Kodak Podium Photo. L-R: Me, Andrew Sluiter, Pierre Pino

Bodgy Canon Podium Photo. L-R: Andrew Sluiter, Me.

Silver and Gold