Day 2 of the Track Nationals


Sunday started much the same as Saturday.  Get up as late as possible, inhale breakfast and head to the track.  The only difference is that this morning I woke up on my own!  Grace had spent the night over in Galway so she would be ready for an early start.  I’m not sure of the exact start time but she was doing the half ironman and it was set to start early.  I’m happy to say she finished and finished well considering she didn't have the best prep for the event.  Her training had been interrupted thanks to another badly run Triathlon who thought that having broken bottles laying around the start area was no big deal.  Grace stood on a bottle which minced her foot and set her back for ages.

Anyway, with a lonely start to Sunday done I was soon playing with traffic on my way to the Eamonn Ceannt Stadium.  The weather this morning looked a good bit brighter than yesterday but according to the forecast it wasn’t due to stay like that.  I had timed things a bit better this morning and I knew the lay of the land this morning so I was warmed up and ready to race with no drama.  I didn’t have the full amount of free time as the start times were brought forward a bit.  The organisers had also seen the forecast and were gonna do their best to squeeze the racing in before the rain turned up.  Despite their best efforts I did get a bit wet while on the rollers which did delay my start for a couple of minutes.  The shower was only light, it soon passed by and the racing was on again.  The first event up for me was the kilo and I had the privilege of going off last in it, it’s good to know what you have to do.  The event itself is pure torture and I find it hard to motivate myself to get out of the gate.  As usual I had an average start and I think it was only 5th or 6th fastest but my second lap was over a second quicker than anyone else.  Considering the event is just over a minute 1 second is a pretty big chunk.  I managed to win the event but I was pushed pretty close.  Terry Mackin finished 2nd and was just a couple of tenths behind me, fair play to him.

Kilo done and dusted the next and final race for me was the Scratch race.  Looking at the start list and it seemed that the local clubs had drafted in as many riders as possible so it wasn’t going to be easy to win this one.  Once the race was on I played the underdog card, with only 4 laps or so done there was a group of lads about a quarter of a lap ahead so when the time was right I blasted across to them as quick as I could.  When I got over I rode with them for awhile and upped the pace every now and then.  The rest of the race went without much drama and the only thing that changed the race was a big black rain cloud that was hovering over the track. This meant the race was cut from 15 to go down to 5 to go.  I was in no rush to get away from the group I was in and was pretty confident that one full gas effort would be good enough to win.  Which just over 1 lap to go I hit it pretty hard and left the lads, I couldn’t go flat out as the track was wet and pretty dodgy but it was enough to do the job.

Win number 3 in the bag and my 4th Irish Championship of the year,

I’m off to do some sort of training,

Talk soon,

M

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