It has been a good week for us kiwi's on the track in Trexletown. Tuesday night racing on the track for the Pro Men and Women is run as an omnium for all the events throughout the night. So if you want to win prize money (which is what we survive on!) you have to be consistent throughout the night and try get places in every race you do. The omnium works well for us as we generally have 6 of us so we can ride for the best placed riders from the first few events of the night. Big Shem Rodger was the man on form on Tuesday so Jason, Tom and myself rode for him. The feature race for us was a 60lap/20km points race, the race was together for the first half and after 30laps I decided it was time to make the rest of the field along with the big Polish sprinters who can ride a pretty bloody good points and scratch race (for sprinters, both went to the Beijing Olympics riding for Poland) really hurt!
I made the first move then Bobby Lea who rides for professional road team Ouch along side Flloyd Landis came with me. Shem knew he had to come across cause he was up in the Omnium points for the night so he did along with Jason and we stayed away till the end. Shem won the points race, Jase second and I got 4th. Overall Shem won the Omnium series for the night which meant a bit of money to survive on for the week! Gemma also had a good nights racing, picking up a 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th which meant she got 2nd in the Omnium for the night!
Following Tuesday night I had to knock out a few days hard training on the road and erg before racing again on Friday night at the track again. Also to fill in a bit of time I went to the local cinema here to watch Transformers 2 on Wednesday night with Canny and Shem. I personally think it is better than the first one and was worth the $5! For the size of Kutztown there is actually quite a lot of things you can do to fill in time, movies, mini golf, the pools, Pops ice cream store is quite often where its at in K-Town...
Thursday night and good old pot luck kiwi dinner at a friend of Dale Tye's who lives in Topton only 4miles from here. Dale's friend Katie owns the biggest dog I have ever seen in my life, I would almost call it a small horse. Major, is a Great Dane that weighs 160pounds (72kg) and he is only 1 year old! Some of the boys decided to do a bit of a dressup as seen in the photo's with Major. He is expected to only get bigger as well... But all and all it was a good kiwi dinner with plenty of food and dessert the night before track racing!
Friday came around quick and there was only to be 4 guys at the track again because Novie and Gatey (Shane and Aaron) were off to Charlotte for the weekend to race 2 of the biggest money paying crits in the States. The night started well with a 30laps points race, I had a good race and it ended up being that the top 5 riders all had 8 points! And I was 5th on countback, and Jason 2nd so was a good start to the night. Unfortunately for Gemma in her first race of the night as soon as the gun went to start the race she got out of her seat to accelerate and pulled her wheel which meant her chain dropped and she fell off! Luckily for Gemma she only had scrapes and bruises and a cracked helmet but nothing more.
Our second race was a 10lap scratch race, we got a bit of a kiwi team pursuit going in the last 5 laps to get across to a little break and I ended up getting 3rd in that race, with Shem 4th. And many of the top 5 from this race were different to the first race so the overall Omnium results were still wide open with the last race a 24lap scratch race still to race. As we lined up on the fence the commentator said first rider to lap the field gets a $100 bonus, many of the riders in the field just heard "che cheng!"... Big Rodge (Shem) initiated one of the early breaks with 2 other riders, they got half a lap on the field pretty quickly before the pace in the field started to pick up. Each time a kiwi got to the front we would slow it down and disrupt the chase which meant Shem was edging closer to taking a lap. Big Rodge was driving the group to take a lap and get another $100. With 7 laps to go Shem was 30meters off the back and the rider infront of him lapped up so Shem hit them with all he had and it was a sprint between him and Michael Freiburg to get onto the back of the bunch! (Not very often would you see that, but for $100 it was definately worth it!) I dropped to the back of the bunch and watched Shem get in contact with the last rider of the bunch by only half a bike length infront of Freiburg! Straight away I took Shem to the front and sat on the front with Shem 2nd wheel for the last 5 laps. I slowly ramped up the pase in the last 2 laps to make sure no attacks could go and the race was between Shem and Freiburg so it was my job to make sure Freiburg didn't beat Shem. I lead out Shem until less than half a lap to go and Freiburg was no where to be seen, so Shem won the race and ended up getting 2nd in the overall Omnium points for the night! Jason got 4th and I got 6th so was a good pay day for the 4 of us.
Today I woke up late, had a late breakfast, watched Jaws on the movie channel and decided I should do something productive with my day so wrote this! Outside it is thunderstorms so I may wait until they clear up and re-evaluate my training for the day! We have been planning a trip to the big apple (New York) for a while now and may do that tomorrow! We are about 2hours inland so it's not too far and it is always enjoyable to be a tourist for a day and go to Time Square, see the Statue of Liberty and yell out "taxi" in New York Central City.
3 and a half weeks until i'm home and in my own bed again! But still have plenty of racing to do before we hop on the plane back to little old NZ...
Will keep ya posted...
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