8/17/97
I've been feeling a bit tired recently. I'm not sure what to blame it on. I have been averaging about 7 hours of sleep every night, and that sounds reasonable. I've started riding in to school more frequently, and for the last two weeks, I've been riding in to school 4 days out of the week, and usually one of those days is both ways. But that's only 50 miles more than normal.
The last Seward park race was interesting. Instead of the normal scratch race (scratch race meaning a normal race), they had a win and out. A win and out is that after a predetermined number of laps, the race official rings a bell, and the next person accross the finish line is the winner, and he can stop racing. The next lap's winner is the second place, and he gets to stop, and so on until 6 positions are determined. This format meant that there would be 18 laps before the end, because the position laps were to begin after 12 laps.
I felt reasonably good last Thursday. Don Perry and Ken Yonemura from the team showed up, although I didn't see Ken until about 1/3 of the way into the race.
On about the third lap, Don was in the lead, and I was right behind him in second place. After the climb, he seemed to slow up a bit, so I thought I'd try to lead him down hill. I was first place for a few seconds down the hill, and at the beginning of the hill the next lap, I slowed down a bit. Then two people passed me on the right like bats out of hell. One guy was wearing a yellow ONCE pro team jersey. I heard him talking to his friend before the race, and it sounded to me as if they were speaking in a European language I didn't recognize. I had never seen him before, but I think he ended up winning.
After I was passed by the speedy guys, I thought I'd try to drop in on the back of the pack. But the pack was going way to fast for me at this point. I may have completely burned out when I was in the lead. (Next time, I'm going to sit behind someone the whole race.) I ended up being lapped 3 times, which means I went 15 laps while the 6th place person went 18 laps. By the last lap, there were only about 6 out of the 30 or so people who started the race. I heard a lot of people dropped out near the end. I talked to Alan at the end of the race. He said he kind of raced the race stupidly. He went for both primes and the 2nd through 4th positions and didn't get any of them, and totally burned himself out.
The race seemed very fast to me.
Yesterday, we had a pretty good ride. Don Wells, Mike Petty, Mike Gordon, David Sarruf, Ben (a new junior rider), and Tony (Don's friend) were there. Matt was there for the first 30 minutes, but he had to go home. We did the around-Renton-up-to-I90-through-Mercer Island route. We went pretty fast, and I was totally beat at the end. Miraculously, my speedo says I averaged 17 mph the whole time, including the horrible climb I have on the way back to my house. I think that's a new record for me on a long ride (I did like 63 miles).
I felt really tired all day, so I decided to take Sunday (today) off.Next entry
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