boo-yah

It's about a million degrees outside on Sunday, so instead of spending my day off in the AC slurping on some chilled frappa-latte thing, I spent it at the track (naturally). State champs for the Sprints and Keirin means go time.

I've been doing 200s in a pretty small gear so far this year, so hey, it's the end of July and time to put the big boy gear on. So on it goes and up on the track I go and it feels pretty fast until I get into corner 4 where it feels REALLY fast and suddenly I have this wierd sensation that I'm about to drag my elbow on the apron, do the bike throw at the line and I beat my PR for this season by 4 tenths. Sweet. 11.61. As far as I'm concerned, I can go home now, my weekend is complete. I'm psyched.

Sprint rounds follow, Beardsley tries to kilo me and I have to pull something out of my toes to get him by the line, then I do the one thing I knew I shouldn't do when racing Zac Copeland (I let him lead it out). Hence I lose with my tail between my legs, race Eugene for third and get it, and it's on to the keirin.

The Keirin final is pretty stacked. Tim Luther, Zac, McMuscles, Casey Deck, Eugene and myself. BANG the gun goes off, I grab the motor (which is actually Mikkel on his track bike, as our decrepid Moto Guzzi has died for the 50th time this year), Mikkel winds it up to real keirin pace (which is about 10mph faster than the motor could ever go), he drops us off, I pick it up a bit and as I look back with 2 to go I see a tim/zac/mcmuscles team sprint starting to wind up on the blue band. Que? No way. Tim flies by me and pulls up to let Zac and McMuscles go through with a lap and a half to go, but I do the big jump, squeeze between Zac and Stephen, and chaos ensues. There's yelling and squealing of tires, I black out untill I'm coming around Zac in the last corner and he's pulling a sweet drift on me all the way past the blue line, but I stay on the gas, get a sweet dive off the bank, kiss everyone goodbye and sail home to a bike length's win.

Casey Deck fought the power and squeezed through the mess behind Zac and I battling up the bank and made a huge push for what he thought was second, but the camera thought was third.

All in all, boo-yah. My first Senior elite championship. On to FSA and LA.

DT