In a few short days I will be leaving this desolate frozen wasteland for a month-long defrost in the SoCal sun. I won’t be spending a lot of time outside though, as the reason I am heading down to LA is for a track selection camp with CyclingCanada. Our pool of 12 riders will spend a few days getting used to the boards at the VELO Sports Center before taking on the 3 day LA GrandPrix track race. Check out this video promo of the race.

It will be my first “real” ( aka UCI C1 level with commissaries present on a regulation size track) track race and I am really keen to see how I fair against a heap of great riders. We have been told to sign up for the Omnium (6 races) and Scratch events. When we aren’t going into the red against the international competition our coach Ian will be hitting us hard in training to see who has the stuff to make the 4 man team pursuit squad. This core group of riders will work with the ambition of racing in the Rio Olympics, as well as the PanAm Games and the Commonwealth Games.

I am a little nervous for this camp. I have about 50 – 60 hours experience of track racing but a good 55 of these hours were spent at the Forest City Velodrome, the world’s smallest indoor velodrome. It’s like me saying I know how to figure skate because I play hockey, a track double the length with half the banking is a totally different animal. It gives me a little confidence though in knowing that despite having a tenth the experience that all the other riders have they still asked me to try out. They must have some belief in my potential.

If all goes to plan I will adapt well to the new challenges and really leave my mark on the racing and the coaching staff. Aside from an outside chance of racing in the Olympics my involvement in track will really improve my short power for the road season. Most roadie’s fail to notice how important these brief efforts can be. Races are won  in the last 30km, and normally over an obstacle such as a climb. You’d be a liar (or a maybe just a really boring person) if you said the first 20km of Milan San Remo were as exciting as the last 20km.

Most importantly, I feel the majority of Strava segments in Niagara are under 5 minutes long so hopefully I will be fit and ready to clean those up when I get back! 😉

song from the title: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq-S8CIU7VA

Note:

This is my first post on runbikerace.com and I am happy to have them hosting me. It also gives me some incentive to write as I will be doing a little update every other Thursday. Whereas my old blog kind of fizzled out every so often until my Grandparents got on my butt to update it. Huge shoutout to my Grandparents, Edie and Ossie!