Originally Posted by
Hermes
I raced at the LA Velodrome on Saturday in the LAVRA cup series. I did the 2K pursuit. I was pleased with my time for this time of year and my training. LAV does a fabulous job at these events and the ref for the day was from USA cycling. Usually, they use starting gates but today we had human holders. I practice standing starts based upon the 5,4,3,2,1 beep and my timing and visualization are based upon this. Today, the USA cycling ref says, that he will say timers ready, riders ready and blow a whistle - no countdown. I did not want a massive start and I did not get one. The timing threw me off and I soft pedaled a couple of pedal revs.
What really threw me off were the Chiva Girls holding pro cheerleading tryouts while we were racing. Racing does not get any better than this. I had a lot of dead time so I took some pics of the racing and the women.
Here is a BF member Cleave on the final lap of the 500 meter TT.
Hi All,
It was great to see Hermes and his wife, Velo Diva, at the LA Velodrome on Saturday. Unfortunately, I had an afternoon commitment and there were so many racers that day that I had to leave before I could do the 2,000 m ITT (another entry fee contribution to LAVRA). As it turns out, my 500 m ITT was a
PR by almost a second. However, as most of my PRs go, it was still a paltry 41.89 sec. I am trying to get under 40 seconds to have some level of respectability (winning is out of the question). Oh, and that was my first ride on my track bike with a position that was as close to my TT bike as I could get with the parts that I have in my garage -- specifically stems. I was periodically banging my knees against my elbows.
After stuffing myself on Saturday evening at my father's 82nd birthday party, I rode two criteriums on Sunday: Masters 40+ 1/2/3 and Masters 30+ 1/2/3. Both were fast and fairly safe with one small, single-rider crash in the 30+ race. Ended up with a total of 50 miles in 1 hr 55 min between both races. I was pretty tired at the end of the 2nd race. All-in-all a bit of a confidence building weekend after the disaster of Valley of the Sun last week.