Hi there Sportsfans!

I just got back from my first track race ever this last week.  It was the US Collegiate National Championships in Indianapolis, home of the speedway and the most ghetto hotel I have ever stayed in.  I had ridden on a track once before, for about 20 minutes in London, Ontario, which I believe is the shortest and hardest track to ride in the world at 138m and 57 degree bankings!  I'd never done a race though and so didn't have any expectations other than what I figured I should be able to do based on some modelling work I've seen.

I ended up coming 2nd in the 3km pursuit with a 3:40 time, which was slower than I had hoped but it was my first time, so I should really cut myself some slack.  If it had been a 4km, I would have been on track to have a faster time than the winner at Canadian Elite Nationals, but I'm not sure how variable speeds are across tracks.  This was a 333m outdoor concrete track and it was quite windy during the race.  The times were all pretty slow and the experienced trackies there were saying it was a slow track, so I'll believe them, having no experience.  It was a bumpy surface but definitely felt better in the bankings than in London, where the super tight curves make you feel like you weigh 2X as much due to the centripetal forces.

I really wish they had made it a 4km with more rounds, I think I would have had a better experience if I could have raced multiple times to get a better feel for the track.  I wasn't staying very close to the black line and was kind of all over the track.  What surprized me though was how everyone commented on how smooth and slow I looked.  I definitely attribute this to the Powercranks and my familiarity with pedalling in circles.  Track racers seem to pride themselves on this ability and I'm sure the Powercranks experience was what allowed me to pick it up so quickly.  Looking at the split times, it was clearly my lack of experience that lost it for me - as I lost 2.5" in the first 50m, totally at the start and then was faster over the rest of the race than the winner, who beat me by 2" in the end.  I was so paranoid about breaking something on my bike at the start that I refused to hammer it since I never put those kinds of forces on the bike in road racing, when you can start in a small gear.  Those trackies can definitely spin - I had the nickname "56-15" all weekend because of the massive gear I was using, and I wanted to use a 56-14, but I couldn't get the chain to be the right length due to my (non track frame) bike's short drop outs!

I'll definitely hit the track again to try out the pursuit, it's a cool event to watch, hopefully Cornell will be able to have a full team there next year for the team pursuit!  For now, the season is over finally after racing since March 1st, time to take a week off and then get into winter volume training mode - my body can take a lot more stress than it could a year ago so I'm hoping to average 20-25 hours a week through the winter vs ~15 last year.  Cornell Engineering definitely makes the balancing act of school and training a challenge.
-Ryan