Well since I needed to stay home this weekend and miss Dinuba/ make some dough answering a pager, I thought I would hit the track for a beginner session this weekend.
Merkeley has been talking it up for a while, and we actually were planning a trip a couple of weeks ago that got canceled by rain, so we went to the Devil Mountain that day and Merkle gave me a look at the new hillacious him, but I digress and the dynamic duo are off on a beach this weekend, , so I soloed down there this morning.
What a fun 3 hours of cycling, having been around bikes for a while now I am a admitted bike geek even though the pocketbook does not allow me to indulge deeply, but just checking out all the geeky aero stuff and geeky frames and mindset was very amusing to me, we all have our little subsets of this geeky world of geeky bikey folks and coming from tris I thought I was hardened to such things, but oh it goes so much deeper and I had lots of fun just checking out the scene......
One thing I noticed was all the ink, leg ink, sleeves, chests, lotsa doodling going on out at Hellyer.
The other thing was the big people, not you ordinary bikey climber folks, mostly fit,and tree trunks would be an exaggeration, but I actually felt... small.
We got a good talk by the session leader and we were off for a 30 lap warmup, then some talking, then bridging across, a talk, a TTT, some sprints out of a small group, finished off with a 10 lap scratch race that I punked out of halfway through.
One thing I really liked was the emphasis on safety, we had a wide range of abilities that would give me pause sometimes when following another rider closely, but I think for the most part we kept it safe, one touching wheels crash, but there is a lot to remember with all the lines and rules, at least at first.
Right up my alley, even though my fitness is slowly going away every week, I still am a student of the game and really dug the pure attacks and speed with no watching for cars and crap.
I rented a bike from the association for 5 bucks and got a nice Langster a little small for me but I made it work, a nice bike and pretty stiff. Real different than the springy steel fixie I used to tool around on/ commute to the O on, when I sprinted on the Specialized, it seemed like it all went to the ground, very cool! I might have to pick me one up for the summer racing season, I could see racing under the lights on a hot summer night, pretty fun and a excellent workout!
I would definitely recommend it and will be pushing a bigger team day soon, it seems that all the skills really would transfer to the road, as well as the leg speed and fitness would be fantastic for the racing season coming up.
5 comments:
Awesome...glad to hear you made it down there and had a good time. Bummer about the crash in the group. Racing under the lights this summer sounds like a blast.
I am glad you had a good time. I got hooked on the track last year. I find the scene down there to be a nice detox to some of the weird aggro that goes on in the Norcal roadie scene. It is a blast to sit in the infield during a long omnium day and chill under a tent with friend. Also, brownie primes seem to happen quite a bit!
Yep, I liked it and will be back.
Brownies... a prime that interests me!
Had I known what Cantua would be... mighta joined you, or the HOP, or maybe even cleaned out the garage. Heck, 12 hours, I could've done 2 out of 3 of those... fill us in on Team Day!
sounds like fun!
it's just as well we don't live near a track cuz we can't fit everything in as it is!
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