Another successful day at the track. My stoker and I were consistently pushing lap times that would give us a track record at the Burnaby track and possibly put us in the range to get a medal at world championships. Track cycling is very different from road cycling in that there are several events (like in track and field) each lasting from as short as 10-12 seconds to a maximum of around 5 minutes (for individual events). The level of effort and the amount of power required to do this type of event is much greater than in road cycling as you have to accelerate the bike from 0 to upwards of 60km/h (for the kilometer race) and try to figure out how hard you can push for the short distance without your body shutting down on you. The joke that is used a lot at the track is that at the end of a pursuit (4000m for elite men) is that if a person did not pace their race properly it is as if they have a boat anchor that falls out in the last kilometer because they just simply cannot maintain the speeds that they started at. The timing and efforts are so precise that going a couple tenths of a second faster in the early laps can cost 1-2 seconds in later laps (keep in mind that a lap in the pursuit on a 200m track should be around 14 seconds). Although 1-2 seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, track cycling is similar to events like the 100m sprint where the event can be decided in the thousandths of a second. At track provincial championships a couple of weeks ago, I ended up being tied down to the thousandth of a second for first place and had to do another race for first place.

It was also a really good day for us because we solved a lot of mechanical problems. If you read my post yesterday, you would know that I said that tandems have a lot of mechanical problems. As of the start of riding the other day, we had a broken crank, two creaky bottom brackets, a stripped bolt holding the crank on that prevented us from fixing the creaky bottom bracket in the rear, a stripped bolt on the stem holding my stoker’s handlebars on and a couple of other little things as well. By the end of today, all we need to do is pick up a couple of new bottom brackets (turned out they were toast) and put it all back together again.

Everyone has been telling me that the track in Burnaby is probably one of the hardest tracks in the world to ride and that all of our times will definitely be faster in Aigle, Switzerland. Below is a link to the website for the world cycling centre, home of the UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) where they actually have a 360 view of the track that we will be riding.

http://www.cmc-aigle.ch/En/

I haven’t managed to find a site where our results with be posted, but I should be able to get that from our coach another day. I found out that there will be 41 tandem teams from around the world competing at this world championships. To give you an idea of the level of cycling, there are probably about a quarter that will be dropped from the peloton early in the race, about a half dozen that will be strong enough to break away and give most top non-disabled riders a good run for their money. We will need to get in the upper third of results in order to keep a spot on the national team next year and we hope to get top 5 or even a medal in the time trial. While in Aigle, we will compete in the one kilometer (the kilo), the pursuit (four kilometers) and a 200m sprint for track events and then a 24km time trial and a 105km road race. Should be fun!