Tri-State Velo

Race Report from Julie Klinger
Hey Guys!
Got home from Indiana on Saturday night and just wanted to update everyone on last weeks events at the Major Taylor Velo.
The week started out great with 200m Qualifications and the 500m TT on Tuesday. I qualified 4th in the 200m with a 13.802! Imagine that!!! A pursuit rider qualifies for the Match Sprints!!! The 500mTT was later that evening and in an extremely tight contest I rode a 41.699 to take the Bronze medal. There were 18 hundredths of a second between the gold and the bronze medals!!! All in all a good day!!

Wednesday, unfortunately,was a totally different story. My warm-up went well for the 10K points race which was held in the evening. 30 laps.....sprints every 5 laps.The race started uneventfully. I was marking certain riders as the bell rung for the first sprint. I was able ride past a few riders in my favorite Friday Night race gear and took third in the first sprint, picking up a few points. The first and second place riders( Annette Hanson and Susan Cooper) pulled up track in turn one and then dove down again in the back straight....I jumped on their wheels thinking they were gonna put the hammer down and try to stay away. They pulled up again in turn four and the field regrouped. Oh how I wish I had gone around them and done some work early to stay away from the sketchy riding in that field.
Around lap seven we were coming down the home straight on a non-sprint lap. I was riding low on the red line with a rider to my left and a very inexperienced rider CHOPPED my front wheel from uptrack. I had no where to go and bounced off her rear wheel twice before going down hard on my right side. The rider behind me went down as well sliding into the right side of my back. OUCHY!!! Needless to say my night and nearly my Masters Nats was over. Right leg, right hip and right arm took most of the impact, but my left knee and left elbow also got into the picture. Thank god for full finger leather gloves (that are TRASHED!!) since I somehow did the right thing and kept my hands on the bars!! NO BROKEN COLLARBONES!!!! However, my back was NOT HAPPY!! After ice and Advil all night I was not able to ride the Match Sprints the next day (Thursday). I eventually got on the rollers late Thursday evening for 25 minutes and decided I was going to ride the pursuit Friday morning pain or no pain.....IT'S PAINFUL ANYWAY!!!!

Friday's warmup went well and after changing gearing, starting legs and pulling a long sleeve skinsuit over a ton of bandages and neosporin I did my 2k pursuit. Definitely not my best time by far, but I wanted to finish what I had started training for ten months ago. I rode a slow 2:58 for 7th place in an event I wanted to medal or even win, but I'm glad I finished it.

So....Saturday I packed up my shreaded skinsuit and gloves, scuffed up shoes, broken helmet, damaged Zipp disc (OUCH!!!) with a shreaded tire on it, bought out every drug store's supply of Tegaderm within a 10 mile radius of the track and headed home with my bronze medal. I'm back on the road bike, easy, and the scrapes and back are getting better every day. And I have exactly 2 months to recover before that "ten months" starts again for next season!!

See you guys out on the road soon!
Julie

PS. Congrats Steve "Lehmonster"Lehman on an awesome 2K Gold Medal Pursuit ride!!!!!