Thursday, late morning

The two Dans and Mark are off to the track for some qualifiers for their scratch races. I am relaxing after a late breakfast, I have a late night points race, second to last race of the night. The schedule is set so there are later starts but with the break for the British National team mid afternoon, it means we race later into the night. Last night started with Mark racing a re run of the morning qualifier that was stopped due to a crash that Mark missed by milli meters, someone even rubbing his front wheel as they went down. The race was right before the after noon break and was running late so it became the first race of the evening schedule. Mark made it into the final so he, Dan C. and I had races in the evening. Dan C. had a very fast points race which he rode well, attacking with some uncooperative mates that only wanted to sit on and let him do all the work. He eventually took third place in the last sprint which got him 11th out of 24, very respectable. Marks race was equally fast with attacks happening right away stringing the field out for most of the race with very few easy laps to regroup. Mark stayed with the main pack until the end happy to finish. I finally got a proper warm up in, just barely. Rollers first prior to the 5 PM open session start, get in line a bit late so I was the second group let on the track, roller off, change gears and then back in line. Another adjustment to how they sort out the big field, 1st two groups get 15 minutes, after that, one rider off equals one rider on to keep the max numbers on the track right. I got on with about 5 minutes to spare before we were whistled off. 500 TT for me, good start out of the gate on the back straight, out of the saddle until the start of turn 1 and then gut it out to the finish with a 40.654, one tenth slower than my best last summer in Blaine. In was hoping to break 40 seconds but I guess that will have to wait until next summer. Bike checks were needed before the race, weight, saddle check for level and this time 3 to 1 check of my Scatto bars, which passed thankfully, they are the only bars I have with me. Immediately after the race, they grabbed my bike again to re check it. Not sure why, at the time I was third but I knew that would not last as the winner came in with a 36.840!!! Packed up late and all 5 of us crammed into Dan's Fiat 500 for the ride back to the hotel. Dan and I starving, ordered carry out fro a pizza place, enough food to feed four, dinner and to bed. More races tonight, mine is second to last, 40 lap points, scratch races hopefully for the others based on the qualifiers this morning.