Track junkie

I think I am officially a track junkie. Short, fast races (for para cycling anyway, 3-4k max), and its what my body was meant for. I have been doing triathlon for almost 5 years since my injury and until last year, I only competed against myself. Granted, I did okay in my age group but I always wanted to compete against other athletes with disabilities. Having said that, I have yet to find another spinal cord injured athlete that isn't in a wheelchair. Triathlon is great but I'm loving going fast, even if its just for a few minutes.

Last week, I went to Burnaby BC to ride in their velodrome with some athletes from the National Cycling Center in Calgary. All of these athletes are disabled in some way or another. We had four amputee's, one head injured, and me, spinal cord injury. Only two of us had been on a track before, me being one of them, and I had not been on a fixie for almost 7 years. I must say, the first look at the banking on this track was a bit worrisome and I was nervous. We were told, any less than 30km/h and you will fall off the track. One of our gals did just that on her first lap. Right before that they said there are two kinds of bike racers, those that have crashed and those that are going to crash.... I went over, knocked on the wood track and said, I haven't crashed yet. That's not altogether true either, I crashed a lot while racing my MTB, but so far, not on my road bike.

We had three days, two hours per day, on the track. I have to say, I haven't had that much fun in a long time. Our first day was just getting used to the track. Out of two hours, I probably only rode for a third of it not because I was tired but because we were still learning and we needed some alone time on the track. I took some time out to evaluate the knee of one of the other riders. He had fallen the week before and his "good" leg was hurting to the point where he had to come off the track. He definitely should not have been out there, he couldn't even pedal hard due to the amount of pain he was in. When I did a cursory exam and brief history of his problem, it was apparent that he had some meniscus damage and possibly some patellar injury as well. He was having an MRI, scheduled after his fall last week, today so I'm dying to find out what the official diagnosis is.

The second day was a lot more fun. The only thing was my not feeling well. I woke in the morning and felt crappy physically. My legs felt great but my GI system was not happy with whatever I ate the night before and I was going to cancel my track time. I am thankful we had until 1pm so I rested until I had to leave for the velodrome. Once I got out there, I didn't want to come off because I felt so good. Meyrick, Mark, JP, and I all got together and rode in a pace line, each of us taking one lap pulls.... at least that was the plan, JP did a few extra pulls, but that's okay, he got it eventually. He was a little squirrely as well at first and I'm just glad Meyrick was on his wheel and I was on MJ's. I quickly learned, thanks to Mark, that moving up track, slows you down rather rapidly. you don't have to move that far but if you are drafting, you catch the wind, and you go up hill slightly and according to Mark, you slow 2-3kph when you move 1-2 feet away from the draft..... that sounded kind of strange, but if you got that, you know what I'm talking about.

After our warm up of 25-30 laps, Meyrick, JP, JP, and I all did some intervals. Those were hard especially considering how ill I felt earlier in the day. I thought I was going to puke so I had Brian bring a garbage pail closer to the track. I'm happy to say, I didn't have to use it. The goal of the intervals was to be as consistent as possible. The plan was to do 3 easy laps then two hard laps. I averaged 17.4 +/- 0.3 seconds for each lap of my interval sprints. Meyrick pulled off a 16.1 first lap then fell off from there but he wanted to see what speed he could go. I was pissed (at myself, I'm very competitive) he beat me on that lap but I averaged better overall. I had done a couple of hard efforts earlier in the session so I was a little tired and I thought it would show on the last couple of my four intervals but it didn't. From there, we did about 25-30 lap warm down and then went for dinner. It was a great session and I felt pretty good about my new found passion for track racing.

Friday was our last day on the track. I got on the track as soon as I got ready. It was cold in there and I needed to warm up. I probably rode 20 laps on my own and then we did the same pace line warm up we did the day before. We didn't do any sprints but we practiced our track starts. I was using a rental bike with a huge gear, 51-16, and I had a tough time getting out of the gate but once I was rolling, it was perfect. I think for a kilo, I might use a different gear but for the pursuit, I will use something like that. Again, we did a 25-30 lap warm down to finish up our session.

Afterwards, Meyrick and I talked to Stephen. I know he is not the guy responsible for the national team but he does know the system and the way to make the team. There are three people necessary for classification for para cycling. Two of whom live in the Vancouver area. While they cannot get me officially classified, they can give me an idea whether I will be able to be classified or not. I guess, until then, I'm in limbo as far as trying to make the National team. I'm waiting to hear from Stephen to get the classifiers info so I can make plans to go to Vancouver and get this taken care of once and for all. Technically, I'm classified in triathlon, but cycling has different categories so, who knows, I might just have to race my bike in the masters category and forget about the other stuff. In the meantime, check out MJ's blog for pics and his take on the whole velodrome thing.