Went out to the track last night - it was too nice outside not to go. 70's, sunny at times, and no rain. Nice.
Three events on the night - Keirin, 15 lap scratch, 8x5 points race.
The Keirin sucked, as usual. I seriously do not understand how to ride this event well. I started 3rd on the motor, which was perfect, then Galen rode up the side, and I let him in. He's a great person to ride behind, and thought it was a good idea. Unfortunately, Jame was in the heat as well (didn't pay enough attention), so Galen let him in, and now I was 5th wheel, which is less great. When the motor pulled off, I let myself get too boxed in, didn't swing wide enough around, and had to drop back to the very back and come around the outside. Stupid. On the plus side, I was able to come back in contact with the top 3 even with this stupid move, so that bodes well for sprinting in the future. I needed to either 1) get smart and not get boxed in 2) be okay with pushing my way through a crowd. Bah.
15 lap scratch was next. Keller Rohrback had 3 guys in the field (Jame, Ian, Galen), so they were active the whole time. Not a ton to say here - lots of breaks went, I followed lots of them, did a lot of work (including a pull hard enough to kill a breakaway I was in - whoops), and everything came back together with 2 to go. Jame went hard, Zach Jones followed, and I hesitated. Stupid, but I attacked to try and catch them and dangled out in front of the field until the end, finishing 3rd. Even though I sort of messed the race up, I still got my first top 5 in the 1/2's, which was my goal for the year. It's nice to have the last real goal I had ticked off. On a side note, this was easily the fastest/hardest 15 lap scratch I've done. Lots of attacking and pace changes.
Finally, there was the 8x5 points. I was a bit tired after the 15 lap scratch, and worried that I wouldn't really be able to contest anything. My plan was to just sit in and see how I felt for the first half. 2 of the 3 Keller guys attacked in the beginning, and a very, very dangerous group of 6 got off the front of the 20 person field. Way to dangerous to just let it go, so I did some work to try and bring it back, while keeping an eye on the last Keller guy in the field (Jame). After 10 laps, Josh (Recycled) put in a hard pull, and the break slowed from the sprint, which caused Jame to try and bridge. There was no way it was coming back together with 3 Keller guys in the break, so I jumped too (though 10 feet behind, so I didn't really get to draft my way up). Once Jame and I made it to the group, Jame attacked nearly immediately and I went with him. We went pretty hard (and I think the break was tired), and got a 100m gap pretty quickly. For the next 28-ish laps, we worked together, except on sprint laps when I just let Jame have the points to keep the pace steady. At about 15 laps, I thought maybe we could lap the field. At 10 laps to go, it looked like we hadn't made any progress, so I started upping the pace. I think the field got tired (and people dropped off - probably only 10 finished, total). Eventually we did manage to catch the field, and I surprised myself by having the legs to still lead out the last lap. I was pretty excited to finish second, and even more excited to lap the field. I had never seen that actually happen in a non-madison before, and I certainly didn't think I could do that (especially in a break of 2, albeit with a really strong 2nd guy). This was the validation I needed after crit racing has been going so poorly for me - feels good to finish near the front of a race again (I'm going to have to get used to it happening a lot less often in the 1/2's).
