Save the Wales and the 2nd Week of Racing

Last week I posted from Swansea (in southern Wales), this time from Liverpool.  In between, I made it back to Manchester for some more training and racing.

On Thursday last week, I visited the Maritime Museum in Swansea, and learned about some of the shipping and metallurgical industry developed there during the industrial revolution.  Many Welsh emigrated to the USA and settled in Pennsylvania and Ohio, bringing metal-working experience with them.

On Friday, I went walking from Swansea through the Sketty area (near the university), over the hills to Cockett (where I had lunch), and then over to Gowerton and back.  Upon returning to the bed and breakfast where I was staying, I mapped out the route I had walked and found it was 16 miles.  Not a bad walk, eh?

Some friends from Crossfit Central Manchester were in Swansea on Saturday for a crossfit team competition, so Saturday morning (after the rain died down) I headed to the industrial park near Cockett and watched some crossfit.  After four workouts, one of the teams from CFCM was sitting in 3rd place and qualified for an opportunity to a head-to-head race with the other top-3 teams to determine the final podium positions.  Blood, sweat, and tears ensued.  Ok, maybe no blood, but definitely some sweat and probably a few tears.  CFCM ended up 3rd after two of the four on the team struggled with the rope climbs, but the team ended up finishing respectably and everyone was happy to be done.

 Part of the competition involved teammates carrying one another.

When Sunday morning rolled around, I caught the train back toward Manchester.  On the way to the train station, my carefully-timed and well-thought-out plan to pick up a snack from the grocery store was foiled by a misunderstanding about what it means to be a 24/7 business.

They are open 14 hours each day from Monday through Saturday and then for 6 hours on Sunday.  I'm not sure how they come up with 24 hours from that...

So, after missing breakfast, I boarded the train that would take me to Newport, where I would change trains and head to Manchester.  The train change went as planned, but then the train was steered onto the wrong track.  A part of me wondered if I would be better off sitting in a backward-facing seat if we had a head-on collision with an oncoming train.  After a few forward and back iterations, we eventually wound up on the correct track and were moving in the correct direction.  Upon arriving in Crewe, the PA system announced that this service would be canceled and for everyone to leave the train.

Crewe is a long walk from Manchester, but after consulting the electronic train schedule display board in the station, I saw there was a perfect 20-minute window for me to visit the restroom (good to rest after getting up early to catch a train) and stop for a sandwich before catching the next train.

While eating my sandwich, I noticed that there were no trash cans in the train station.  There were also signs indicating that littering was frowned upon (and some transit police were on hand to frown at me if any littering were to occur), so I just stuffed the sandwich wrapper into my jacket pocket and boarded the train.  On the train, a guy with a big garbage bag came by to collect rubbish, so I did not have to carry the sandwich wrapper all the way back to Manchester.

Back in Man-city, the Man-city Football Club was playing against some team with red jerseys, and the police were out in force to frown at any participants of civil unrest.  They might have had riot gear with which to do more than frown, but I don't think it came to that.  I didn't know that at the time, though, so I was kind of excited as I headed over to the velodrome for the Sunday night training session (the velodrome is about a quarter-mile from the Manchester City Football Club grounds, where the game was being held), thinking that this might be my first chance to see, with my own two eyes, real English soccer hooligans performing real hooliganism right there in my presence.  Sadly, whatever hooliganism may or may not have occurred was finished by the time the training session ended.  Maybe there will be a rain-check opportunity for real hooliganism at another home game later in the season...

On Monday there was another edition of the ACT (Association of Cycle Traders) track league, so I headed over to the velodrome again Monday evening, 81" gear in hand (on bike, really, but you get the idea...), ready to do battle on Madison night.  We had almost the same line-up of events as last week, with a 50-lap Madison in place of the 50-lap points race from the 18-Oct edition.  The first three events were so-so; I was definitely in them and active in making the racing exciting, but didn't finish in the top-3 in anything with the possible exception of the Courses Des Primes (point-a-lap for us Americans) where I finished 2nd on the last lap to pick up a small bonus.

In the Madison, though, it was another story altogether.  It was pretty clear that I was the strongest rider in the race, but also on the smallest gear by a fair margin.  My teammate and I agreed that I would try to be in for as many of the sprints as possible, so if it meant skipping an exchange, so be it.  The plan went about as well as we had hoped, so I think we had the points fairly well wrapped up by the time the lap cards showed us 10 laps to go.  At the end, I was thrown in with three laps to go, and attacked right away.  One guy caught up and passed me on the finishing straight on the last lap, but we had enough points that only taking 2nd at the finish didn't matter.  We won.


On Tuesday night, I wanted to redeem myself for a somewhat unimpressive performance the week before, so I picked up my race wheels and set up the bike with a 92" gear (48x14) in anticipation of another hammer fest.  The Manchester Regional Track League did not disappoint.  A handful of very legit heavy-hitters showed up (attendance was a little lighter than the previous week) and made for some good, tough racing.

In the 10-km scratch race, I launched off the front with 5 laps to go, and built up a reasonable gap, but was caught by the eventual winner with 2 laps to go, and then caught and passed by one other rider on the finishing straight on the last lap.  After being way off the back last week, I was happy with 3rd.

In the 50-lap points race, I exercised patience and did not sprint for the first two point laps.  With 23 laps to go, another rider and I took off and worked well to stay away from the field.  I came around him on the back straight on the point lap, but then Ed Clancy came ripping past both of us as we exited turn 4, so I was left with 2nd place points on that lap.  I think I picked up 2nd place points again with 10 laps to go, and finished around 5th to take 5th place overall.

The Devil race was not overly kind to me; I was the 2nd rider pulled.  However, that left me an extra 90 seconds or so to rest before the 10-mile.  Groups 1 and 2 were combined for the 10-mile, which led to some spirited racing as the population of riders on the track slowly shrank from about 28 to about 10.  Near the middle of the race, I was in a good breakaway group with two of the fastest guys in the field, plus one group 1 rider, and we had taken about 3/4 of a lap on the main group.  Unfortunately, I was caught sleeping when the group 1 rider exploded and started going backwards with the two fast guys in front of him and me behind.  As I went up and over to pass, he swung up to get out of my way which in turn blocked me, and then he saw me and swung back down just as I corrected to drop into the lane and pass underneath.  This fooling around caused a huge gap between the two fast guys and me, so I ended up having to swing up the track and rejoin the group on even laps rather than a lap up.  At the end of the race, I followed an attack with two laps to go, and then put my head down and hammered away as the other rider sat up, so I was able to take the sprint for 3rd (behind the two guys who were up on laps).  All in all, this was a good night of racing that I was really happy with.

Today, I checked out of the hostel in Manchester and hopped onto the train to Liverpool.  Now I'm in Beatles land, checking out the sights and enjoying some British west-coast culture.  Cheers!