PPV 08.24.2023
A good ol' fashioned scratch race with a twist(!) to start the evening. The twist is that there are 2 prime laps in the race, and the prime winners get scratchy lotto tickets. I won the 2nd prime and came in 2nd in the race. Tim is tough to beat in these short races, and the 100 degree temps didn't help!
the Win-And-Out is a weird race, especially when it's an unknown distance. The race works like an elimination race, but the winner of every lap is eliminated until all riders have been placed (first winner gets 1st place, 2nd winner gets 2nd, etc etc). This creates some tricky transitions as the lead rider has to pull out of the race in front of the rest of the field, who are still sprinting for the next lap win. There's also a risk of losing a hard sprint and having no energy left to fight hard the following lap. It's easy to burn all your matches and end up last if you're not careful! On top of all that, we didn't know how many laps we were going to do before the eliminations started. And it was 100 degrees. I snuck into 3rd place here, and I'm glad it worked out because I didn't have another lap in me. My apron exit was really sketchy and it took everything to stay under the blue line through 1&2. I should have stayed on track through the corner and scrubbed more speed before pulling down. Lesson learned there, I won't be doing that again.
The final race of the night was a quick 8 lap Tempo race. Instead of scoring points each lap, the lap winner gets 1 dice roll after the race. 1 lap win = 1 roll of a 6-sided die for each of the first 7 laps, the winner of the last lap gets to roll a 10-sided die. The person who rolls the highest total number is declared the race winner (so if you win 3 laps, you get to roll 3 dice and the total number showing on those dice is your score, if you win one lap you get to role one die). I'll be honest, I was already cooked when this race started. 100 degrees and a week off the bike made this a rough night of racing. I spent the whole race off the back and finally came through to take the final lap*. Ultimately I placed 3rd after the dice rolling. *As the video shows, I left the sprint lane when I got out of the saddle for the final sprint. In doing so, I impeded my teammate Simon who was sprinting against me for the lap win. I knew it was sloppy (my shoulder is still healing from a collarbone break in June), but I didn't realize at the time that I left the lane. Under normal circumstances, this would be a disqualification. Simon and I talked it out, I apologized, and he was content to let it go.
