Category: B
Result: 2nd

OK, maybe I should take back the comments I made about the Burlingame criterium. In the first race this evening, an A event, there was a crash. It happened on the back straight - an Olympic Club rider went down, and for a while, it looked like he was the only casualty. Then suddenly there were upright riders hitting each other and one hit the rider who was already down and another 4 riders out of the 15 went down. Not a pretty sight.

Unfortunately, there were some injuries. Two riders were relatively OK, just a few cuts and bruises, but the initial rider to go down slid a long way on one side and had severe road rash all up his leg as well as grazes on his hands. I don't know if he was wearing gloves, but it didn't look like he had been. At least this guy was walking. Will Percival from Stanford was sitting up, but not getting up and waited for the ambulances to arrive. He was carted off to hospital last of the three, probably with a broken collar bone.

The worst-off guy was a UCSD/MP3.com rider who had quite a bad cut on the inside of his right thigh. It probably occurred through contact with a chainring... OUCH! There was quite a lot of bleeding and he was the first to be tended to by the ambulance folks when they arrived. It has been a long time since I did any first aid, so I felt like there was nothing I could do to help the guys who were down. Hmmm - might be time to re-qualify so I can help.

Needless to say, the racing was delayed whilst the casualties were taken care of, but racing did resume after about an hour's delay. With the attrition, the groups were re-jigged a bit, with the B's and C's combining. I have to say that I was tempted to pack it in and not race, but in the end I didn't and had a good evening racing.

First up was a win-and-out, where I put in an almighty effort to try to catch a pair of break-aways, only to manage not to drag the pack up to them, and then have nothing else for any of the sprints. Next was a 15-lap points race, with sprints every 3 laps. This is a hard race, as there isn't much time to recover. I placed in all the sprints but the last, by which time I was again toast. I did enough for 3rd in the event.

Then ther was a 10 lap scratch race, which was fun. Mark Franklin attacked early, and we were content to let him go for a few laps, a bit like on a sprint stage of the Tour. However, at some point it is necessary to organise a chase, and I was one of those who did. We caught him, but not before he won a special prime of $120 donated by some RAAM folks who were down watching for the evening. They did it properly with a picnic hamper! I contested the sprint for the win, but young Daniel Hollloway just managed to come round me in the last 10 metres.

Finally, we had a de'il. This time, I went to the front and set the pace. The rest of the guys seemed happy to let me do this, and I wasn't seriously challenged. I surprised myself how long I was able to keep the pace up, and really before I knew it, we were in the free lap winding up for the final sprint. By this time, my legs were on the toasty side, so the other two came round me and I got third.

The end result of the evening was that I got second in the omnium by a point from third, but some way behind 15 year-old Daniel Holloway who won the A's on Wednesday - he is good! Second gives me another 3 upgrade points. I think that I just need one more and I can upgrade to Cat 3 on the track, which would be great, as that is my short-term goal this season!

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