Twilight Series Win

I try to keep 'race reports' brief to avoid boring teammates, friends, and family members. I also try, by and large, to avoid making them the subject of this blog. I enjoy reading other people's stories from their races, and I enjoy writing about races I've done, but it's not my intended focus for this blog.

So you'll have to forgive me for my last post, on last week's scratch race out at the velodrome. It's got a fairly high word:distance ratio, considering that the race was under two miles (if you've ever wanted just the meat and potatoes, as it were, of a bike race...).

But it was an important race: winning it made me win the evening's omnium, which clinched my victory in the 2009 Twilight Series. I also won the remaining points I needed to upgrade to Cat 3 on the track.

I was nervous going into the night's races, knowing that first place could either be won or lost. For the past month I'd raced knowing that winning was within my reach, as long as I didn't give up too much ground to my nearest competitors. But instead of giving up ground, I looked at the schedule of races, said to my teammate Al, "I need to win this scratch race," and I won the scratch race. And won the Twilight Series.

Like I said before - no victory salute when I crossed the line, but it feels pretty good.