Fun Racing

Club teams pursuit was today, and it dawned sunny but soon came over stormy. The rain pelted down for a while, after a couple of glorious sunny hours whilst I was inside seeing  my patients at work. We headed up to DISC, only to find that the roof had leaked and the afternoon's action my or may not go ahead. A while later after spending a some lazy time in a cafe in Fairfield eating a light lunch, the call came. We were on, with a delay of about an hour. I got a warm up of sorts riding from home in the rain, and gathered all my stuff together at the velodrome. It turned out that one of the guys from my team (one of two from Hawthorn) hadn't turned up, so another guy who had come along for a quiet day's spectating was ducking home to dust the cobwebs off his track bike, all in the cause of the greater good.  The other blokes on the team had significant road TT credentials, but little experience pursuiting, so I was off first, from the starting gate, while they all had holders. Our other team had a messy but fairly strong ride, and had the strongest time of the day. Our time came, and our third rider broke, so it was back into the gate after a roll around the track. This time, I was focused, and got away to a strong start. Held a strong upper body into the first turn and powered into the straight. I looked around towards the end of this, and was gobsmacked to see the rest of the team coming out of the first turn. Much backpedalling ensued, and I sped up again as the team got back together by the end of the 3rd turn. Pulled up at the 4th turn, and onto the back. The other guys were holding it reasonably through their laps, but I could see that they were going to flag by the end. I took a 2 lap turn, modulating my effort so as not to gap anyone, and swung off again. As I thought, there were a couple of half lap turns and we got through again and I finished it off on the front for a couple of laps, but pulled through a bit hard. We finished in 3.51, which was not a bad time given how disorganised we had been and the lack of team practice. Kind of bittersweet as a ride, as I would have loved the opportunity to ride 3.36 with the others, but still had a fun ride with the team I had. Not sure whether it was a good thing for the individual ride coming up next weekend. Have to ride a lot faster than that on my own.