Yesterday marked the end of the 17th masters track cycling world championships here in Manchester. Being several years shy of the minimum age required to compete, I accompanied the Hammer Racing Team to the event as mechanic and general-purpose infield helper.
Over the course of the week, I met many new people and every day heard old stories retold and new ones unfolding. Here is a brief overview of how the week went.
A week ago Saturday, I linked up with the team and checked into the hotel. We ate dinner in the hotel bar/restaurant area that evening.
Riding kilometer time trials very rapidly requires lots of energy. The first night, we made sure to feed the sprinters. Later in the week, Sky won medals in the kilo and team sprint. Maybe there is something to be said for eating with two forks?
On Sunday, the riders had some training sessions at the velodrome, but there was nothing for me to do at the track, so I joined several spouses of riders and took the train to Liverpool.
The city still stands as the metal lookout birds on top of the Liver Building have not flown away. Yet.
On Monday, racing started, so my duties at the track began. The Hammer team made quite a respectable showing, with four of the five riders contesting sprint distance events in several different age groups and "Count" riding endurance events in his category. I also looked after wheels for one of the local British riders who contested the mass start endurance events (scratch and points race) in his category. He came away with a silver medal in the scratch race and making several crafty moves in the closing laps of the race. It was very exciting to watch, and a very good result too.
The track surface was improved since I raced here last year, and the lobby/reception area was substantially renovated. If these improvements continue, maybe in another year or two they will have consistently sunny days in Manchester?
After the racing concluded Saturday evening, the group went for dinner at Bella Italia, an Italian restaurant chain here in the UK. We sat near the door, and in the middle of dinner, saw another group of American riders enter the restaurant. Members of each group had long-running friendships and rivalries, so it was very interesting to hear some of their stories.
Count messed with Gibby.
After dinner, I parted ways with the Hammer group, but will certainly see them after my ongoing adventures in the UK and Europe.
Yesterday around 8:00am (GMT), my flight from Atlanta touched down in Manchester. I made my way through customs, picked up my backpack from the baggage claim, and took the train to the city centre. There, I checked into the hostel, bought a SIM card to activate the quad-band GSM phone I picked up in California, and walked around for part of the afternoon in an attempt to hold off jet-lag.
In the late afternoon, I made my way to Crossfit Central Manchester for a WOD, my first visit to the gym since June. After doing some toes-to-bar, handstands, and burpee broad-jumps, I'm feeling a little rough around the edges, but glad I went. Post workout, it was straight back to the hostel for dinner.
In the evening, I joined a group of folks at the hostel for a tour of bars and clubs. I went to one bar and then pulled the plug on the night, heading back to the hostel for some sleep. After a long day of travel, I slept like a log. On an interesting side note, the bar featured mostly British and European beers, but they had Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap. It seems odd I could go 1/3 of the way around the world and find a beer from within 200 miles of where I grew up.
Today, I ventured out into Manchester to walk to a handful of nerdy destinations. First, I headed to the Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Park. Mr. Turing was an engineering hero in World War II, but a tragic figure after the war ended. A couple years ago, he was granted an official apology from the British government for the way he was treated.
Mr. Turing and his deadly apple sit, permanently, near the university in Manchester. There is allegedly a computer buried under the memorial. Today, I sat with them.
On the way back toward the hostel, I spotted the Manchester court house. It has an impressive clock tower, shown below.
With narrow streets and a limited viewing angle from my camera, it was difficult to take an image that does this building justice. Hopefully, there is plenty of justice going on inside.
Closer to the hostel, I spotted a pair of street names that tickled me in just the right way. How could I resist taking and sharing pictures of streets named after famous scientists?
Faraday Street has a Cuban bar/nightclub at one of its corners.
Where does Nicholas Cage go for a haircut? Con Hair.
In light of yesterday's news, I wonder if Steve Jobs will have any streets named after him. Time will tell, I suppose.
I'm sitting in the San Francisco airport right now, waiting for a flight to Atlanta, GA and then a flight from there to Manchester, England for the 2011 masters track cycling world championships. Today marks the start of another multinational off-season adventure.
I made the podium in the team sprint at Colorado state championships over Labor Day weekend.
This past weekend I wrapped up my 2011 racing season with some competition at the US elite track nationals in Los Angeles, CA. All in all, this was a highly successful season, with three events in the past month that I want to go into a little more detail about.
The first weekend in September was the Colorado state championships at the track in Colorado Springs. I rode every event (individual pursuit, sprints, points race, scratch race, kilo, team pursuit, keirin, Madison, and team sprint) this year, and while I missed out on claiming any state championships, I made the podium in 6 of the 9, an encouraging result for an omnium rider.
The second weekend in September, there was an event that I was not a direct participant in, but that I watched with keen interest. It was the paralympic road racing world championships in Roskilde, Denmark. A racer who I have been piloting on training rides this year was competing, took 5th in the time trial, and then went on to win the road race. Having been part of this rider's training over the course of the year was a huge boost to my morale toward the end of a long season.
Finally, this past weekend was the elite track nationals at the Home Depot Center velodrome in Los Angeles, CA. I had a fairly full schedule with the international omnium event on Wednesday and Thursday, scratch race on Thursday, team pursuit on Friday, and points race on Saturday. The omnium was my real focus for the season. Things went more or less according to plan on Wednesday, but then on Thursday I exceeded expectations by riding a 20-second PR in the 4km pursuit, placing me 3rd among the omnium riders and 4th (had I paid my $60 and signed up) for the stand-alone pursuit. By the end of the night on Thursday, I was sitting in 8th place in the omnium, a very satisfying improvement from my 17th place finish last year.
Also, I qualified for the final in the scratch race, my first scratch race final at an elite nationals. That was an exciting improvement over the previous years' efforts at nationals. Then on Saturday we had the points race, where I qualified for the final fairly comfortably, and then threw down at the end of the 40-km evening ride and captured points at the 10-to-go and finishing lap points sprints. That was one of the hardest efforts I've made in a track race, but it felt really good to go out there and leave everything I had on the track.
Here is a video showing some of the highlights from the points race. In the closing laps, I'm the rider at the bottom of the track, being chased by a group of three riders. Even knowing how that last lap turned out, it was kind of a nail-biter when I saw this video on Monday night.
Stay tuned for more updates from the UK and Europe. I'm on my way!
