Wednesday, August 04, 2010

far west championship

so i heard a rumor from alfred nash that the current world champion of the international omnium and points race, tara whitten, was going to be coming to the far west championship.

i was a bit skeptical.

...errr, intimidated.

i guess she was really jealous that I was the reigning 'far west champion,' and she wanted to add that title her laurels. i mean, who wouldn't? it was definitely the highlight of my 2009!

when michael and i show up, we see peter bohl get out of his van. man, we can't get rid of that guy! him and lala had apparently gotten up at 3am to drive down, and were driving back that night. crazy guy! it was a big hellyer contingent, which was awesome. nash loves us and gave us lots of nice shoutouts on the microphone. thanks nash!

nash was running one helluva race: full national qualifier plus new olympic style omnium. i think this was the first-ever olympic style omnium to be held... apparently the old-olympic omnium wasn't hard enough for the UCI, so they decided to add a 6th event and make all the distances longer. except they split the program into 2 days... but not al nash. we did the whole shabang in one day. it went like this...
  • flying250- i got a personal best..... [cause it was the first time i've ever done one of these!] it got me 2nd place.
  • 80 lap-points race- i was doing really well...well, until i wasn't doing well any longer. i was a dip shit and missed the break that lapped the field, then pretty much did a 3k pursuit in no man's land. i got 4th here... baller.
  • elimination- i did another 3k pursuit here, setting pace at the front for about that long. on the 4th place elimination the person questioned if her or i was out (it was her), so i got distracted and then the pace picked up and i didn't have enough muster to come over, so i got 3rd....baller.
  • pursuit- i guess this was my third pursuit of the day, but this time i got to use aero bars and borrowed a funny hat. my splits were super even, so that was good, but i got 3rd by a half second or so...baller again.
  • scratch race- my ability to accelerate was waning fast and it would take me 2 laps to catch onto any attack. missed tara whitten lapping, and ended 3rd place again... i won't say it again (but, yeah, baller).
  • 500m- i pulled off a good 500m for me, so that made me glad, but still got me 3rd.
.....bummed i was riding kinda poopy, but so it goes. but on the good news, all these 3rd places landed me 2nd place overall! so that was pretty rad~ it is kinda fun saying you got 2nd to the world champion, but, in reality, we know it was something like this:
the real problem of my racing was that i did not follow my teammate ted burns' advice regarding racing canadians...
1. Throw some donuts down at the start of the race, Canadians can't help themselves.
2. If that doesn't work just grab some beer an do the same thing.
3. They aren't too bright...tell her it's an extra long track, and tell her every thing in Feet or miles...they only know metric.
4. Tell her that the queen just died. That will make her cry
5. Tell her that Neil Young renounced his canadian citizenship years ago.
i knew i sucked. how could i forget such valuable race material on race day?!

anyway, here are some super sweet pictures of me thanks to pat benson. there are even some cool ones of me by the world champion. xmas card material for sure.

me checking out tara whitten's awesome quads

bethbikes! attempting to pursuit

miss 'n out

so that whole extravaganza resulted in approximately a 13 hour day in the chamois! i had found a sweet all-you-can-eat buffet for us to eat at, called hokkaido seafood buffet. yeah, check out that floor plan-- there are sweet pictures and even a you-tube video if you click on the individual parts of the floor plan. dinner was $16.99 and we definitely ate our monies worth. it was awesome. in addition to all-you-can-eat sushi, they also had a chocolate fountain.

apparently gio took a picture of us. i was too busy stuffing my face to notice.

so that was the far west championship. we drove back that night and got into oaktown around 4am. my boyfriend was crazy enough to want to do a criterium the next day. i went to cheer, but instead of cheer, i got distracted and talked to tim montagne. i did see him chit-chatting at the back a few times. when we were leaving we saw the women's race going on, and we heard some chick in the peleton say "is that beth?" as michael was attempting to ride me back to the car on his bicycle. let me say: it is much cooler riding on the back of your boyfriend's bike than doing a race yourself.

well, that is about it for the far west championship. no wait, oh yeah, la la beat the reigning national champion in a match sprint! that was cool to watch. okay, i'm done for real this time-- thanks alfred nash for another fun socal racing experience!

4 comments:

BIG BROTHER said...

Your Neices are _3_ and 5.

beth bikes! said...

4 in one month! i am rounding up.

Anonymous said...

^^^ funny. I haven't a clue how old my nieces/nephews are either! erm about 5 or 6 I say, and I wioll continue to say until they are 9 or 10 probably.

Poutine... you forgot poutine... and bacon...

Marian said...

Nice! Tara Whitten showed up at Cascade and won a stage. (I mean, I was sitting on my ass in the feedzone at this point, but I was still there.) What's up with those sprinters who can climb? ;)