2006 Provincial Track Championships Race Report (April 26/06)

The 2006 Provincial Track Cycling Championships were held at the Forest City Velodrome in London, Ontario. This is one of only 3 indoor tracks in North America, built just 1 year ago. It is the smallest velodrome in North America. It's 138 metres in length and has sharp 50 degree bankings. With over 70 riders registered for the championships, the field was the largest that Ontario has seen in many years, showing that the sport of Track Cycling in Ontario has grown back to exciting new levels of days gone by. 1982 World Champion and Multiple World Record holder, Gord Singleton was racing on the weekend. He showed everyone that he is still in great form, competing with the Senior Men. He won the Silver Medal in the Senior Men's Sprint and the Bronze in the Senior Men's Kilometre Time Trial.

My first race was on Friday night. It was the 500 metre Time Trial. It took almost 4 laps of the 138 metre track to cover the distance. I clocked in at a time of 41.36 seconds, winning a silver medal, just 0.18 seconds off of first place.

Racing started up again Saturday afternoon with the Individual Pursuit. I had a decent ride in a time of 4:10.66 and won the Gold medal. Next up for me was the Scratch race which took place Saturday night. Maogosha Pyjor and I attacked the field 3 laps into the 60 lap race. We worked together to lap the other riders twice. It came down to a sprint for first and I fell short by half a bike length. Maogosha won and I came second.

Sunday's racing consisted of the Points Race and the Team Pursuit, which was a demonstration event for the Championships. The Points race saw my second Gold medal of the weekend, bringing the overall tally for the weekend to 2 Golds and 2 Silver Medals.

I will be focussing my training for the next month on preparing for the Lehigh Valley Velodrome's opening season track races on June 3 and June 9. These are UCI sanctioned races and should draw some International level track riders looking for UCI points, so there will be some very competitive racing. This track is located in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania:
http://www.lvvelo.org

Julia's Ontario Provincial Track Racing Results:
Gold Medal: Individual Pursuit, Points RaceSilver Medal: 500 metre Time Trial, Scratch Race
Full Women's results can be found here:
http://www.forestcityvelodrome.ca/results/Results_April_21-23_06_Women.pdf

Mosport Race - Ontario Cup #1 Road Race (April 19/06)

Over 70 women lined up for the start of the Women's race at the 2006 Ontario Cup road race at Mosport race track in Bowmanville. In my 9 years of racing, this is by far the largest women's field I have ever seen at an Ontario road race! It's exciting to see that the sport has grown to this extent!

Mosport marked my first race with my new team, "Team R.A.C.E.". I'm really excited to be racing for this awesome team. The women on the team come from a variety of backgrounds including triathlon and running and a few of the women do Ironman triathlons as well as road racing.

There were 6 women from my team racing at Mosport and the excitement level was high! We also had our own personal cheering squad - a couple of the guys from the men's team cheered for us every lap around the 4km course. What a team!

I went right to the front when the starting gun went off. Since there were so many unknown faces and the winds were extremely strong and blew the group around, I decided to stay very near the front of the pack and keep out of trouble. I was grateful for this decision when I heard the sound of more than one crash behind me.

This race capped a very hard training week for me and I was feeling it in my legs less than halfway through the race. Yikes! I knew I was in trouble when the pace picked up on the climb. I went to stand up and I had to sit back down because my legs were cramping so badly. I spun my way up the climb and was yo-yoing off the back but managed to hang on to the lead group of 22 riders for the rest of the race to place 22nd.

A couple of light days of recovering are definitely in the cards for me as I look ahead to a full weekend of racing at the Ontario Track Championships in London, Ontario next weekend. I'll be competing in the Pursuit, Match Sprints, Points Race and Scratch Race in preparation for some UCI track races in Trexlertown in June. Stay tuned for a full report from London.