The national six day championship just ended here at the velodrome---six days of madison racing where teams of two riders takes turn racing, while slinging each other into the heat of action when trading off. The pace is fast and furious (often over 29-30mph for long periods of time), and the element of danger is very real as people move on and off the track at high speed at very close quarters.

I had a blast, but the riding came at a high prize. I got crashed out twice by the same rider, who eventually ended up being disqualified for dangerous riding. The first crash was not so bad, but I ground pollen from the track into my skin and had an allergic reaction that put me in the emergency room when my lungs swelled up to the point where I could not breathe very well. After some adrenalin and O2 things shaped up, but this meant a bunch of precious hours of sleeping lost. The second crash occured high at the track, and I banged myself up pretty good---the last day I was riding at 80% capacity only.

I and my partner Steven ended up on the podium in second place, which was very cool. We are now official national silver medallists, and we got some sweet schwag too. This was my first racing with the cat 1 and cat 2s (including a team that travelled up from California), so to place this well felt very nice. Yay!