Sunday afternoon track racing

Yes. I pretty much have the track racing bug. I think that after U23 nats I will try to put in a lot more track work and see what happens. At the very least it's great training for my road racing.

Today's races were a keiren (with qualifying rounds), miss and out (see previous post), points race and scratch race. It turns out that I won 3 of the 5 races on Wednesday and took the overall omnium so I was pretty excited to see what I could do today.
There were 11 riders in the combined field which worked out great for me since I wanted to get points to qualify for the American Velodrome Challenge. This is a big event that has good payouts, exposure and sees some of the best athletes show up. I think the past has seen olympic and world championship athletes compete. If you've ever wanted to watch some track racing this sounds like one to attend.
The keiren was brutal for me. My legs protested too much and I made some mental errors in positioning and timing for the sprints. Because there was 1 field today the qualifiers were pretty much back to back. I think I did 3 Keirens one right after the other and by the end I was getting tired. The worst part was getting 3rd place so many times...I needed a 1st or 2nd in order get to the final.
At that point I pretty much thought that the rest of the day would be me, the roadie, getting schooled by the trackies. So, there I was awaiting the miss and out in anguish thinking that of all races on the track this is probably one of the hardest for a roadie to figure out. During the race I tried to be smart and was fortunate to always be in the right place at the right time. To my joyful disbelief I found myself in the top 3 going for the win. The only obstacle now was the rider that happened to be my nemesis Wednesday night. However, when he beat me in the last miss and out on Wednesday he made his move at 1 to go by dropping down from the up track position and proceeded to put an insurmountable gap between us. I was ready for that this time and started licking my chops as soon as he made the move. I glued to his wheel, got a nice draft and came around for the win. Now I was in first for the omnium.
So far, I've pretty much covered the most important pieces of my racing today. After the win I kinda' declined and lost a few places in the omnium...Not sure exactly where I ended up though.
I took somethingeth in the points race (somewhere in the top 5) and top 5 in the scratch race.
All in all nothing spectacular... just having some fun on a nice Sunday afternoon!
U23 nationals is approaching quickly and I do feel that the legs are coming along pretty well. Hopefully I can report some fun and exciting news from Georgia in about 1.5 weeks from now.
See ya' on the road!