Silvers!

 

The picture says it all. I am now in the possession of two national master's silver medals! This is a great result by any measure, and I am happy to have done so well.

The kilo day ended up being enormously long. If you wanted real track time, you had to warm up at four in the afternoon and the program ran so long that I only got to race at midnight after seven hours of waiting with only rollers to keep warm on (I got slotted as the last rider of the night). In the end, Mike Beers (2002 elite kilo champion) bested me by .1 seconds. In the pursuit, the situation was reversed, I was the first rider out. This is the worst possible position as I had to guess what time to go for. I knocked a couple of seconds off winning times the day before and cruised in a PR by 7 seconds, but coming into the finish I know that this had been on the conservative side. Indeed, one of the later riders of the session managed to take a few seconds out of my time. Oh well, that's bike racing and I feel that I did the best I could do given the cards I was dealt.

We learnt a lot of lessons about logistics of racing and travelling by air on this trip (one of them being that it is really hard and exhausting). I have a newfound respect for pro's that have do this stuff all the time!

So this is the end of the 2007 track season, which proved to be a season of large improvements. Now it's time for vacation! Yay sweden!

Last preparations for master's nationals

 

 

This weekend was the last opportunity to work on form before next weeks trip to Pennsylvania for master's track nationals. All in all things went exceptionally well with a new personal best time of 3.48 for the 3k pursuit on Sunday at the master's state championship; this time is the fastest recorded 3k pursuit time at alpenrose since 2001 (which is when OBRA started putting results on the web). However I am still quite a bit off the track record, which has been standing from 1998 when a junior freak of nature rider blitzed out a 3.42---a lightning fast time for a track as slow as Alpenrose. I'll hereby celebrate with pictures which would have illustrated my great form and the resulting medal presented by a lovely track representative if it was not for the fact that they were taken during FSA grand prix a month ago.

(Note the awesome facial expression, the result of breathing so hard that the lungs are coming out of the nose).

Tune up for masters natz, sweden

   

Hey faithful blog reader. Here is the latest scoop: A lot of time has been devoted to tuning up for the track season finale in Trexlertown, PA. Immediately on getting back from this adventure (which will take place in two weeks), we'll leave for a swedish vacation---so prepare to socialize if you are in Sweden! Tuning up and lying on the sofa has been the main theme for the last couple of weeks, which has made us a little bit hard to track down for socializing. This weekend, however, was pretty amazing: Several long time friends cruised through town, and we got to hang out hard core (among other places at the Portland Zine Symposium, where two of children we used to live with were displaying the stuff they had made at zine camp; only in Portland....).

There has been a fair amount of photography too; here are two recent pictures of Amelia. The brooding one is the one to fear; if you race with her, and she gets in this mood she'll track you down and beat you with her powerful giant hands (photography note: Now you see why a lot of portraits gets shot with tele lenses, but alas my medium format camera has a single fixed lens; no matter, I like this shot as it is but it might not go over to well for your modeling portfolio if that is what you are into).

We are getting excited about travelling.....

Late summer evenings

 

 

 

As the summer progresses, we are getting more motivated to get out of the house and try to spend time outdoors. This time of year, every evening starts to feel precious as there are only a couple of months left of good weather. Not too far from our house is the Willamette waterfront, which makes for good sitting (it is not quite as nice as the bluffs, which was our default summer hang out space when we lived in north portland, but it is plenty nice).

Seattle

 

 

After finishing the FSA grand prix, we wandered around Seattle. It is a really cool city in summer, and unlike Portland it abuts an ocean. Our legs were pretty raw, so we had to skip out on the underground tour. Instead we mostly sat around and enjoyed the sights and the old buildings. Naturally, we went to the vegetarian teapot and had great food. Our big mistake, however, was to wait until we were pretty hungry before we started heading over, which resulted in us almost passed out from hunger when we got caught in the logjam traffic resulting from a giant parade that was going on.

Amelia wins her group at the sixday

 

Oh, I almost forgot a most important happening: The week before FSA, Amelia raced the sixday with coach Brian, and they kicked ass and took names. After six days of madison racing (which is an interesting type of tag team racing where team mates take turns in the races, and exchange by throwing each other in by the hand; see picture), they emerged as victors in their group. They are both sprinters, but they gritted their teeth and did the work. There are rumours about a womens national sixday championship at Alpenrose next year; Amelia is keeping her ears peaked.

FSA grand prix rev 2

 

Last weekend we went to Seattle for the FSA grand prix. After getting fourth both in the pursuit and in the kilo at AVC, I wanted some podium action---and podium action I got. This was a qualifying event for nationals, so few people wanted to take on a nonamerican for the team pursuit as this is a good event to qualify during as there is not that hard competition. This bummed me out, but the individual pursuit went ok with a new PR time that put me in fifth (the margin for the fourth spot was .005 seconds, but such is the nature of racing). I did the team sprint with a team mate, and Steven Beardsley who I raced the six day with last year. We did not have a technically perfect race by any means, but the time was good enough for a third place and some cash. Later that night Amelia set a new personal record with a great 500m.

Last year the kilo at FSA ended up being a very good ride for me. True to form, the same happened this year. I set a very fast time, that only Matt Chater (Canadian national team) could best. Great! More money, flowers and podium. After this we called it a day and headed into Seattle to get some R&R. Hopefully I'll be able to keep building on my current form, which would be very good for my final event of the year in a few weeks. The season is starting to feel a bit long though (I can only imagine what those that will do nationals feel like, it is end of October :)).

My rides would have qualified my for nationals in both sprint and endurance events; just like last year I will not be able to go due to not having American Citizenship. Maybe next year!