Womens Omnium-done and dusted and a new goal or two.

47 exhausted women competitors struggled out of DISC late yesterday after a day's racing which had started about 7 hours before.

The Omnium is cycling answer to the Pentathlon in Athletics. We race a flying 200, Scratch, Pursuit, Points and 500m TT all in one day, the middle 3 races in the list all being shorter than usual. With 47 riders there was never any problem with the rule stating you must have 30 minutes between races.

Melbourne is famous for often providing 4 seasons in one day, but yesterday it contented itself with just 1...pouring rain, for which we are truly grateful, especially if it also fell over the reservoir catchment areas. However, although initially I thought..good I'm scheduled to ride indoors today, I'd totally forgotten about DISC's roof....AKA sieve.

Scheduled to start at 1100, that time came and went and we'd not even been allowed to get on the track to warm up as there were wet areas all over the place. Eventually, with regular dabbing with towels by a bevy of helpers we started the competition off with the Pursuit...at least the low down wet areas could be easily dealt with, there was one rather large puddle low down on the back straight which meant the start gates were placed higher up than usual. The dabbing kept on during the entire day, but once the pursuit was completed the "dabbers" had it under control and the rest of the competition flowed on.

As for my racing...there were 8 masters riders entered and after a quick look at the list of riders, which comprised 30-44 year olds, my goal became..see if you can avoid being lapped in the mass start races, and try out different gears in the others. And that's what I did.

So using 48/14 for every race except the TT...
I rode a simple appalling Pursuit ...I dunno, I've lost the plot on how to ride this race,
an OK flying 200m...def not my race...I keep having to ask how many laps I'm s'posed to ride!
I was lapped only in the final sprint to the line in both the points and scratch races
and finally after a day long "warm up" and riding 44/13 was only .2 sec slower than at the Worlds in the 500m TT.

So, having buried my watch somewhere or other at the start of the day, I dragged my sorry butt home to find Phil had already had his meal and that it was after 7pm. The car remained packed and since I haven't yet found my watch I still didn't know what time it was when I staggered downstairs this morning!

This week's training continues as before..endurance stuff, peppered with 2 gym sessions and T'ai chi and for next weekend another trial of 44/13 in the 500m TT as I've entered the Vic Metros Champs. Since I'm going to be racing for less than a minute(!) I must organise myself even more thoroughly...3 trips into the velodrome for a day's racing is ok..3 trips for 44 seconds is not ok.

New Goals

I'm a goal orientated person so when I find something to challenge myself I'm a very happy camper and yesterday I found 2 new goals, one doable, one...probably not!

I decided to do all my warming up on rollers rather my usual ergo trainer..the reason being that with the ergo I have a tendency to stay on it too long. So there I was warming up on rollers when who should park herself in front of me but Helen Kelly, fresh from the World Cup and who I know would be an ace on the rollers. Time to look and learn Liz!

So look and learn I did and as a result here are my new goals on the rollers:
Numero uno: to be able to stand up and do efforts.
Numero duo: to be able to take off a shirt while happily pedalling (and staying upright).

The first one I will be able to manage, the second one........nah!..worth a try though?

So to deconstruct the challenges of the second goal..firstly smooth pedalling cos no hands (natch)...impeccable core strength to maintain balance while dealing with the added external perturbation of getting out of the shirt plus also the momentary loss of visual input.

Hmm...I think I'll start testing for this one by pedalling no hands with eyes closed briefly, then add waving hands around to mimic the shirt off bit.......if I can get that far and not break bones, then I'll go for broke (pun intended).

And finally next Monday Phil and I will be celebrating our ruby wedding anniversary...40 years!!