Six Day-Day One

Tonight I got to the track and spent a good 30 minutes re-aquainting myself with a fixed gear and riding on the track itself. I have done one pursuit this year on the track, but you only have one other person on the track and you are not sprinting, so it's really no comparison for what I have gotten myself into. Tonights races included a Madison pursuit to seed the teams into the "A" group (really fast) and "B" group (everyone else and us). This would be our competition for the rest of the week. After that we would do a 20 minute Madison.

For the pursuit Andrea and I decided to just practice riding up to each other and maybe touching hands as a form of an exchange to get used to the idea of the timing needed for an exchange. We had to do 4 exchanges in the 3k race so to make it easy we decided to exchange every 2 laps of so. We also wanted to time our exchanges so that we could do them on the flatter sections of the track and not on the banking. I could already tell that this kind of race was going to require a lot of thought on my part and that was before all the rules I had to remember for the mass start Madison. The pursuit went well and when the A and B groups were sorted out we were third. I am sure we looked really pathetic, but we are learning.

B
1 Abers, Brian Bjesse-Puffin, Amelia 4:37.02
2 Murray, Mike Curl, Darien 4:40.30
3 Fisk, Andrea Bihlmaier, Jeanie 4:54.55
4 VanValkenburg, Heather Charboneau, Emily 4:55.14
5 Mautner, Meg Hughes-Godfrey, Lynn 5:08.56

The mass start Madison was worrying me. I had read the Madison rules on the OBRA site and looked over Madison diagrams that Mike Murray had posted, but none of it really made a lot of sense until I actually did the race. I did break one rule, about 1.5 laps into the race when I went under and exchange (big, big no no) and I was lucky that I didn't cause a wreck. I will never do that again. Andrea and I did great and rode within our comfort level coming in two laps down from the leaders.

Madison B
1 Abers, Brian Bjesse-Puffin, Amelia Even 21
2 Murray, Mike Curl, Darien Even 9
3 VanValkenburg, Heather Charboneau, Emily -1 3
4 Fisk, Andrea Bihlmaier, Jeanie -2 7
5 Mautner, Meg Hughes-Godfrey, Lynn -2 4

After the races Steven and Jimmy stayed and worked with us on exchanges and we practiced for a while with exchanges, timing, riding in a paceline and exchanging. I felt 100 times more comfortable when I left the track and was really excited for the Madison on Tuesday.