Sunday, October 14, 2007

Final Day of Track Nats!


Of course I have a pink bike!


Team Sprint! My partner Liz Reap-Carlson is from PA.


My real partner- Greg.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Heather takes Silver!



She is an animal! I am sure she will be sending us a race report soon.

Cari

Friday, October 05, 2007

Elite Track Nationals

Well, here we are. Heather and I are both here in LA racing at the ADT center- the only indoor velodrome in the US. Although we are racing in completely different events, it is nice to see a familiar face.

The racing is an all day event. You warm up... sit around... warm up more... sit around again... race... cool down... sit around... warm up... sit... race... you get it. 8-10 hours of this for 4 days in a row! Exhausting.


Day 1- 500m for me. I set a PR and came in 3rd! I was very excited but know I have more work ahead of me to be on top. Liz Reap stomped competition and made the time standard for the talent pool. This is really an incredible accomplishment and with this time she will be internationally competitive in that event.

Heather attempted the mass start test along with 20 something other girls. This test consists of a flying 500m followed by a 2k (the 500 is part of the 2k). This test is PAINFUL! Nobody made the time standard unfortunately. Heather looked super strong!

Day 2- Keirin for me. This is the one I have talked about before- one of my favorite events. We are paced by the motor and have 2.5 laps to fight it out. I qualified for the finals which is always the hard part. The finals was fast and I missed several moves... it was not my smartest race ever. I was super disappointed with this race but did 1) finish 4th and 2) avoid a big crash.

Heather's first event was the individual pursuit. For a sprinter, I wonder "why?" Anything over 2 laps at 100% effort seems silly. I think I am just jealous that I could never hold a pace for 3k. Next, Heather took on about 20-25 women for the scratch race. This is similar to a crit- 40 laps and the first one across wins. This was an exciting race with lots of attacks and lots of people falling off the back. In the end, I think about 15 or so girls finished. Heather did great overcoming her race nerves (from her prior racing experience) and finished with the pack.

More later!

Cari