Euro Masters

[neil_laing]

Well done to Ali  for defending her European Masters 500m title with a new European best time to boot!

Congrats Ali.  World title next?

[aliC]

Cheers Neil,

July had both the British Masters and the European masters. I’ve neglected keeping people up to date on the track racing – so he’s an update on last month.

The beginning of July I travelled down to Newport for the British masters, the Mussleburgh boys kindly gave me a lift, many thanks to them. The great thing about the masters is that there is a great Scottish contingent and over the years you get to know everyone and cheer everyone on to do their best (and they all cheer me on too). Its good fun and good racing doing the masters – a long way to go Newport, but its indoors and so guaranteed racing.

The competition consisted of – Sprint, the 500m time trial, 10K scratch race, 2Km pursuit and 10K points race.

The sprint and 500 were first, I won my golds in these, although my legs were not obeying me for these races but great to get these done and a good result so I could relax and see how the rest of the weekend would go.

The endurance events I had to dig deep to complete. The scratch halfway through the race, I was almost off the back of the bunch, I looked around and realised I was just about to become a very lonely bike rider and thought no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  this cannot be. I held on for a few laps, then moved forward, unfortunately during my suffering at the back, the bunch had split in two with others letting people just ride away from them. But I had enough to beat everyone in this group to finish mid pack overall – The pursuit I was up against Louise from the city for a bronze medal ride off & did this not hurt ? … yes, a lot! Lousie got me by 1 second and afterwards I literally had to be scrapped off the floor - a wheezy, gibbering, sweaty mess.

The points on the Sunday afternoon I made a pact with myself not to drop a lap – as I’d never finished a points race on the same lap as the winners always getting lapped. I also geared down which paid off as it made the suffering and recovery quicker. The aim was to stick in till the last sprint and pick up points if I was still there at the end.

During the race I was accidentally in contention for the first sprint, the bell went, I looked around, thought I can pick up some points here and went with the sprint – only to be squeezed out at the line – it then took me another 20 laps to recover ! seriously a points rider I ain’t ! much much suffering was had to try and stay with the bunch during this time. By the race finish I’d perked up and was in about 6th place with 250m to go sprinting through to finish 2nd – hooray ! who would have thought? And bonus, I won silver overall in my age category.

The European masters was in Manchester last week and I was down for just the 500m, I did win, but was disappointed with the time. Getting caught in the gate at the start and taking a detour off the track. Looking back at a video of my start I’m pretty sure I didn’t jump the gun, the gate just didn’t release … My time was also adjusted down by 0.2s afterwards – I think this was to compensate for the delay. So a long way to go for a 37s race to mess up the start. But I won, I reduced my European record and have more practice to do. There is the World masters in Portugal at the end of October which I’m planning to goto although it is a long way to go for a 500 meter race especially where a messy start can make the difference between being on the podium or not!!! Seriously … who would be a track sprinter?

[tlottrike]

Nice one Ali who'd a thunk a Points race medal, nice one