Wednesday, May 27, 2009

hats and far west championship

we all rolled into socal with one goal in mind: hellyer clean up. i think between burger continental and the far west championships, we accomplished that.

pre-game

i knew it was going to be an incredibly fun trip-- i mean, with the one, two punch of studley and maurice-- how couldn't it be?

hanan and ben arrived at my house friday morning, setting the tone for an amazing road trip, outfitted in some pretty absurd hats. hanan was so kind as to bring a whole bag of hat selections. i was given the wwi-type hat, affixed with ear flaps. we loaded the car and headed out on our way. the first gas-fill up stop was pretty awesome. not only did we make friends with someone else who had an incredible hat, but hanan and i also took in the amazing central valley scenery.

please observe awesome hat.

the rest of the car ride was extremely eventful, as we spent approximately 4 hours playing "shoot, fuck, or marry". yes, there were some amazing combination that led to thought provoking conversations. those, however, will be left within the pickup.

after arriving at steph's house, we found an amazing restaurant called burger continental. from the outside, you'd think it was just a burger place...but you walk in and you see the most amazing middle eastern salad bar, which comes with every huge proportioned meal. there wsa also a band that rocked the three level keyboard. and just when we didn't think it could get any better, the belly dancer came out! i am still in awe of how much food i ate that night. it was heroic. my rationale? stock piling for the next day.

the race:

let me just say-- the far west championship was awesome! alfred nash is not only a great organizer, but sweet announcer. we were super bummed by the crappy turnout. i don't know why more people wouldn't go to the race-- it ruled! our field size was only five, and then men's was 7 or 8. but those small fields didn't stop us from racing hard. it was an international omnium, which meant the events were a 200, scratch, 2k, points, 500-- and you tried to accumulate the least amount of points.

our field was comprised of hanan, me, jen reither - a woman who races with the nrc vanderkitten team, and two sprinter women, cj and shane who i met before. it was going to be some good racing.

i was pleasantly surprised by my 200m-13.37, cause it was a new track and i have been sprinting really slow recently. this time got me first.

hanan and i pretty much worked it over in the mass start events. in the scratch race, i attacked early and then hanan countered and stayed out there forever, as i was blocking for her. when we did catch, it was about 3-4 to go, and i countered and launched a big attack, staying away to the finish. at this point, i was the leader with two first places.

however, i was pretty nervous about the pursuit-- cause, i have no clue how to do these things. i only had done one other 2k (at last years international omnium) and have never practiced my pacing. i was the only one without aero bars for this event. the guy with pistols tatooed on his calves let me borrow his aero helmet. thanks! i just focused on not going out to hard and keeping it steady, then tried to pick it up the last three laps. it really helped having ben, maurice, hanan, and nole yell at me in all the turns. my time was a 2:51, which i don't really know how that is, but it got me 2nd in the pursuit. jen came in first with a 2:50. after i saw her time, i was super happy, cause she looked really fast when i was watching her! and i know she is legit, after i saw her bridge up to the break at the ToC crit this year.

before the points race, hanan was not the happiest camper and almost threw in the towel, as she was having some mechanical issues. she couldn't get her aero bars off her bike because of some compression nut problem, and all of our boys were racing their points race. no fear, we got the announcer to solicit some help, and we fixed hanan's bars. there was no way i was going let her punk out on racing when our field size was so pathetic. i was in pretty good shape to win the omnium at that point (with two firsts and a second), unless something crazy happened, so figured i'd try to move hanan up in her placings. points racing is pretty fun, when you are trying to get other people points. hanan, jen, and i got away from the field pretty early on. i spent the whole race pretty much riding jen up and down the track, so hanan could get a clean attack and get away for the sprint laps. it was pretty fun, but i don't think i made a friend in the process. hanan won that race and i got second, surprisingly considering i wasn't even paying attention to my points.

my 500m was so-so...my start was not very good, and i felt pretty sluggish sprinting, but still had a 40.8, which i can't complain about after that long day. that was okay for 2nd in that event. so i got first overall, which was really cool-- cause i've had a plauge of second places this year!

the boys did equally as well-- (except for their 200m). ben won the omnium, with maurice in 3rd and nole in 4th. the crazy, thing, though, was how close it was. had nole gotten a couple places higher in an event, he would have been first. jimmy watkins got second place. he pretty much owned them in the 200m and the match sprints the boys decided to join. that was kind of cool to watch. nole and jimmy lapped the field in the scratch race. then in the points race, nole cleaned up and won it. ben and maurice got lots of 2nd and 3rds throughout the day to get them on the podium, while jimmy won three events and got near last in the 2k and points race. the guys' kilo times were all within hundreths of a second from each other. all in all, definitely a great day for hellyer!

here are our awesome podium shots. note the hats.

jen reither had a pretty awesome skirt. and i didn't even have to tell her it was "crazy hat" podium picture. she definitely gets awesome points in my book.

and there isn't much to say about this picture except gawk at maurice's hands.

the after party

so after we totally cleaned up at the omnium, we did what we had to do. go eat at burger continental. it was equally as awesome. maurice danced and showed up the belly dancer, which was pretty awesome. not to mention our totally rockin' waitress who told us a bar to go to.

i won't give too many details of the after party - because i can't really remember them - but i would just like to put in a plug for skins. even after a day of hard racing, if you go out to party-- you should definitely rock the skins under the skirt. in the dark of a bar, it kinda looks like that skirt and leggings look. i believe the skins allowed me to do crazy-ass dance moves, that otherwise would have been impossible. i know because hanan kept telling me: "wow! how do you move so fast!?!" i would like to say it is because of evenings at thursday's bar & lounge in akron, ohio. i may be the worst dancer in the world, but i do have mad heart. i even challenged some guys to a pushup contest on the dance floor, but of course, skins had nothing to do with that. the only downside of skins-- which they really should work on their technology-- is i had a crazy amount of drunken bruises the next day. oops.

conclusion to a weekend of champions

we went to pie & burger for breakfast, where maurice had the whole restaurant laughing in the elegant way he excused himself from the table to go to the bathroom. (read: did the splits over nole's head). then we began the journey home. for some dumbass reason, i had pre-reged for the memorial day crit on monday, and my motivation to do a stupid crit after such a fun weekend was pretty nominal. what can i say about memorial day crit? it was an excellent recovery ride.

and that is the conclusion to the weekend of the far west championship.  many thanks to my excellent travel companions! 




6 comments:

Velodrome Results said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

ooops, was signed in on wrong bloggO account.

yay for beth and her hotwheels!

hernando

chatterbox said...

Great job, Beth! Also, good work at the crit after all that. I will have to find that Continental burger thing some time. Wow.

bethwellie said...

Bethie! Congrats! You are my hero! 13.37! Holy crap! I'm wondering how many more exclamation marks I can use in this comment!

Alfred Nash said...

Thanks for the props, I hope we'll see you & the crew at Encino again, and at NATs @ ADT.

I guess I'll have to keep an eye out for you in my home town of Pasadena!

flandria said...

oh man...my comment was removed...bummer