This was the last Friday Night at the track for the year, and it turned out much better than the one three weeks before when I crashed hard. The fields were Men 1/2, Women 2/3/4, and Open 3/4, which turned out really nicely for me since it meant I could race in the reasonably small Women's field while the Cat 1 Women raced with the men. I decided to race not only the Omnium but also the Sprints, since it seemed like fun. My first race of the night was a match sprint against two men I didn't know. I wasn't running a very big gear since I knew I might not have time to change it before the next event, so I decided to take them by surprise and go long - I started with over 1.5 laps to go. I held them off for a while but one of them came around me on the home stretch, so I ended up 2nd.
Next up was the Power Mile, which was just a 5 lap scratch race. I think there were eight or nine of us, so it was a nice sized field. We started off a bit slow, and on the second lap I heard Coach Dan yelling at me from the warmup circle to punch it and see what happens. I made a bit of a move, but not enough to shake the field, so I backed off to rest for a bit before taking the last two laps hard to win it. My next race was another scratch race, which was only 12 laps long. We all traded pulls for a bit and some small moves were made but nothing too exciting happened until I powered off the front going into the last lap for another victory. Right after that race I was called to the ready for my next sprint, which would be after one other pair went. Oh, and I just happened to be sprinting against my boyfriend, Jose Soltren. Well, we'd done this against each other before, and I pretty much knew I didn't have a chance, but I went for it anyway, attacking with just over a lap to go, hoping to catch him off-guard. It didn't work and he passed me pretty quickly, but at least I tried. I was getting fairly tired by this point, having come to the track that morning for pursuit training. Luckily I got a bit of a rest as we waited for the Kiddie Kilo and the 50 lap points race to finish before our 20-lap points race. If I'd been fresh I would have considered trying to lap the field, but since I was tired I decided to be conservative and just sprint every 5 laps. I ended up winning the first 3 sprints and got 3rd in the last one, so that was my third victory. Right after that, I was called again for a match sprint, but luckily the other guy scratched so I ended up 7th out of 12 without having to race a 3rd time.
The last race was the Miss 'n' Out, which was thankfully very short due to our field size being down to 6. I burned a fair amount of energy staying up above most of the laps to avoid being caught at the line, so when Heather attacked on the last lap I was a bit slow to follow and couldn't quite pass her at the line. Since I won most of the races, I also won the Omnium, which was cool. I had a lot of fun racing and I wasn't very nervous about riding in a pack again, though I did witness some close calls in some other races. I think next year I'll come to a lot more Friday Nights since I had so much fun this time.
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It was a fun night, and you did really well overall, especially the bits where you just pulled away from everyone else near the end. And I'm sure you'll eventually beat Jose in a sprint, probably by outsmarting him somehow.
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