Pacific Raceway, 5/20/08

Enjoyed my first race outing of '08 on the flat track course at Pacific Raceway. I want to thank Ken for all his help in making a hole for me in the bunch when I couldn't find one on my own :). Ken had a nice finish while I was a little to gas'ed coming out of the last turn to provide any excitement. Ken does a good job of summarizing the race which I have dropped in below. I hope we can get some decent weather for a return to the flats on the 6/10

So PR was phenomenal tonight, with a strong showing from CycleU with Travis and I. I was definitely glad to see some CU livery show up out there, so thanks to Travis.

Good news: the rain stayed away. Bad news: the wind didn't. I had us clocked heading west doing about 18-20 mph. Heading east (slight downhill) we were cooking along at anywhere from 29-34, depending on whether we were chasing or if someone had a head of steam built up.

Interesting race in that it was a 'point per lap' race, so that meant a lot of sprints over the 50 min duration into the wind down the final stretch. At the end of the race I had a total of 20 miles.

Travis was a champion in his first race this season, he took quite a few turns at the front (and I mean the very front) on the tougher (westbound) legs. We both felt pretty good at the end of the race, but with only two of us, probably wasn't much chance to make any tactics work. It seemed like we were at or near the front on most of the laps. Field tonight was (guesstimate) about 60-70 riders (Travis?). Couldn't really make anything happen in terms of taking sprints away. Managed to finish one lap 4th-ish, one 6th, and pretty happy with my overall finish, but had a really tough time against some much stronger sprinters.

Big lesson learned tonight seemed to be that in a windy situation, good positioning while you're NOT fighting the wind is key. On the eastern (downwind) laps, if Travis and I stayed near the front, we really had no trouble staying there on the upwind laps. It was very tough for anyone to move up while fighting the wind, everyone really wanted to tuck in and stay in the line to avoid killing themselves outside the draft. Other big lesson learned for me was that the watts started to really pile up in the big sweeping (wind neutral) turns, and you really had to hang on and cash in a little there or you were going to lose some of that position that you'd worked so hard for on the downwind laps. Even though that hurt at times, it was totally worth it in the long run.

Well, as the weather cooperates, hope to see you all out there. Lots of PR races left this season, and it's a really great place to race.

http://www.buduracing.com/pdf/courses%20for%202008.pdf