Track Racing, Kevin Hetherington-Young, June 6th
Another fun night at the track…
I decided to play with my gearing a bit tonight. I upped it to 94.5 gear inches (55×16). I think it was ok, but given my legs were still a bit tired from climbing Wachusett on Sunday, I think I could’ve done better with a 53×16 ( 89.4 inches) or 50×15 (90.0 inches). Perhaps next week. Barry’s loaner bike was set up with a 48×15 and he commented that he definitely could’ve used a taller gear in the A races and was just spinning out when the attacks went. On the other hand, gearing is a pretty personal thing and different riders with different styles should set things up differently. BTW, I’ve set up two sets of cranks with different chainrings to make changing the gearing a bit easier.
I also recommend bringing your road bike and trainer to keep the legs loose between races.
Race 1: Scratch race. A nice quick race to warm up the legs. The A race went pretty fast from the gun and I managed to take the win in a sprint. Here, I think the taller gear helped as once I spun it up, I think it was pretty hard for others to close the gap. The challenge is finding that balance where you can still spin it up repeatedly. The key for me was successfully attacking first on the final sprint. I didn’t have to spin up the gear while someone was already riding away from me.
Race 2: Points race. This was more of a traditional points race compared to last week. We did 12 laps, with sprints every three laps and points for first, second, and third (3, 2, and 1 points respectively). Barry gave me an awesome leadout on the first sprint and I took the three points. He almost managed to hold third despite the leadout to prevent anyone else from taking that point (his declared and savvy strategy). Thanks Barry! I managed to position myself nicely for the second sprint as well and attacked on the back straight, earlier than last week’s outside passes in the last turn. I held on to win the second sprint. After a second in the third sprint and fourth in the final (no points), I won the race with eight points. The fun thing here was the constant positioning, attacks, and bridging, all without the ability to shift to the right gear for the task. It really teaches you to pedal efficiently in a variety of styles and conditions. There are also some really good sprinters here with very different tactical styles. With all the repeated racing, you get to know how they race and tweak your tactics accordingly. They’re doing the same to you, of course, making it constantly interesting.
Although the tall gear helped me in the first two sprints, I think I paid for it later in the race and could’ve done with a shorter gear to keep the legs a little fresher.
Race 3: Snowball: This twist on a points race was new to me and a lot of fun. The idea is that the winner of each lap earns a number of points equal to the number of laps raced. We did ten laps and thus, the last lap was worth ten times the first lap. I sat in the first few low-point sprints but found myself in perfect position for lap four and took the four points. I went hard again on lap seven to up my tally to eleven. In the last two laps, there was a strong two-man attack that I failed to hook on to eliminating any chance for the win. Lucky for me, the same rider won both sprints locking the other rider out. This allowed me to tie for second with 11 points, a distant 18 points behind the winner.
Race 4: Win and out: Another fun, different, and interesting race. After a neutral lap, the rider to win the first lap wins the race and pulls out. The rider who wins the second lap takes second and pulls out, and so on. The last three riders do a three-up sprint. Keep in mind, these sprints come every 318 meters on this track. It’s fast and furious, and given the rules of the race, you can imagine what the first lap was like. The real challenge is if you sprint hard and take second, you’ve burned a match with nothing to show for it and you have to sprint again 300 meters later for the next place. For the first sprint for the win, we came through the final turns three abreast in full sprint (I was outside and slowly passing) when the middle rider kicked out out towards me as a fourth rider went inside. This killed my sprint. The hard effort at the front for this sprint caused a split and I sprinted a two-up sprint for 2nd on the next lap and lost by about a foot. The gap was still there and I rolled in for third a lap later. For me, this was basically a tactical Kilo with two sprints thrown in the middle.
Another note – track sprinting teaches a different, and I think useful technique wherein more of the sprinting is done at high cadence in the saddle. Pro riders like Jonas Carney, who cut his teeth on the track, proved for years that this approach and techinique can be very useful on the road, especially on the crit circuit.
So another good, fun night with 1st, 1st, 2nd (tie), and 3rd.
I know there were some other good NEBC results in the other classes and hope to hear about them.
Kevin