Cornering Confidence

I rode at the track again last night. I got off to a pretty slow start; my left knee felt pretty wonky during my warmup. It felt bad enough that I was considering stopping and going back home. I stopped to stretch for awhile, and that seemed to take care of the problem. I had no problems after that.

The main point of interest happened during our first little race. It was restricted gear, and we rode opposite the normal direction. The reversed direction meant that the downhill section had some relatively significant curves. Anyway, for the first two laps, I felt pretty good and really crushed the downhill section. I was noticeably faster carving the downhill corners than most everyone else. So, I was really happy about that; that's the sort of experience that will help me build bike-handling confidence.

Of course, on the third (and last) lap, the pace was pretty high; I started the lap near the front (thanks to my descending), but I blew up climbing the hill the last time. Still, I felt good. I told Sarah that I felt like a bike racer again for the first time this year.

In our second race, I stayed Mark Wolowiec's wheel for a while (as long as I could). It was pretty interesting to follow him and watch him work through the field. It seemed pretty clear that he reads the field and the race at a much deeper level than I do (which is no surprise, given that he's vastly more experienced). The one thing that struck me was that he seemed to take the individual rider's characteristics into account as he decided whether to follow them or not. For example, as we approached the climb, we were following a relatively weak climber, so he pulled out and positioned himself to go around just before the climb started, anticipating that a gap would open up (which it did). The result was that he smoothly caught on to the next wheel. Had I not been following Mark, I probably would have stayed with the slower climber until the gap had already started to open; then I would have had to work harder to go around and close it up.