Category: A
Result: Mid-pack

It's Wednesday again - it's track night...

Four of us (Me, Scott, Garry and Ziggy) got there relatively early and did a little bit of TTT training. This early training mucked up my usual eating patterns and caused me problems during the racing.

Tonight's programme was geared towards points races, so there were only 3 rounds of races instead of the usual 4, but the final round were long points races for each category.

There was a good-sized A group which include some fast riders. First up for us was a scratch race. I basically sat in and finished in the bunch near the back.

Second race was an unknown distance win and out x5 - 5 sprints, all with unknown distances between them. A cruel race, made all the more cruel for me, given that I was burping throughout the race and threatening to being up the contents of my stomach. Not good, and I was gapped as I was severely hampered by not being able to breath.

The A's got a 54 lap points race at the end :-). The field was whittled down surprisingly rapidly, and I was relatively comfortably sitting in the main field, helping in the chase to bring back the leaders. Bring them back we did at around 24 laps to go, but at 19 laps to go there was a crash. Someone moved up the track, not that quickly and took out a front wheel. Only one rider went down, the rider whose front wheel was hit whilst he was looking over his shoulder to the right, away from the rider coming up the track. The race was neutralised, but the rider got up OK and we restarted.

However, during the neutralisation, Garry handed me a water bottle which I took and drank from. That was mistake 1 - feeding isn't allowed in that situation, so I was penanlised one place - lesson learned. Mistake 2 was that I should have paid attention to my body from earlier on, as when we restarted I again had stomach problems, but this time they were more serious. I started throwing up in small mounthfulls whilst trying to race, which resulted in me going out the back of the "pack" (5-strong at this stage). I kept going and finished the race, but spent 18 laps, or 6km, distributing the contents of my stomach, mouthful by mouthful, onto the apron.

Anyone can throw up once due to effort, but to sustain it for 18 laps takes real skill and dedication. I claim first dibs on the Golden Barf Bucket.

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