Super Rookie’s World

The racing at the velodrome on Thursday night was a ton of fun. I think every single person at the place had a smile on their face during the festivities. I didn’t hear any complaining and even Bob seemed a bit more jovial than normal. In fact, the jokes that Bob was cracking over the loudspeaker were legendary. During all of this fun time the following happened:

• Skibby drove the moto for the Keirin final and deposited the riders at something like 45mph as he pulled away with a BSEG on his face. Hilarious.
• The Grumpy’s/LGR team did a 4:45 team pursuit…only to realize that the officials made us do only 15 laps. We were given a respectable time of 5:02 based on the last lap time. I bet with the right pairing (sub Big Matt for myself) that the team is capable of a 4:49 with some practice.
• Pete Hanna, Doug Regester and Chris Ferris are great break away partners in an 80lap points race. Even pulls and even point distribution throughout the race. I had to beat Richter in the final sprint to take home second place and was able to do it, but wouldn’t have been able to with out a leadout from Joe J, or being put into that position with the rest of the team.
• Pat Lemiux scored something like 60 points in a 40 lap points race in the 4/5s. If you figure 5 points for the leading each sprint and 20 points for each time lapping the field, this would amount to lapping the field twice and winning the 4 sprints. Very Bergman-esque. Big props to Charlie Anderson for sticking with Patty Cakes.
• Dave Grey in the Keirin is always a hoot. If you look closely at Big Dave you really get to see that he is actually made of 3 geometric shapes; (an upside down triangle on top of two rectangles).
• The revamped Grumpy’s/LGR ladies team were trading attacks and making the womens racing a hoot.

Yet, despite all of the previously mentioned awesomeness the best part of the night was the clinic that Peter Schweich and Matt Allen put on in the Cat3 Miss and Out! I am not kidding. The two of them hooked up and combined to take out 10 straight riders in the 13+ person field. The huge HUGE crowd was going nuts with each time the Little Guy would scoot up next to Peter to box out the next rider. It was a ton of fun to watch and the crowd was hootin’ and hollerin’ the entire time.

To bad Peter got relegated for taking Little Guy to the apron