Dortmund: Day 2

"...I'm the one that looks like I'm breathing out of my arse!"

Neil Campbell told me this in an email this summer, pointing out how to find the picture from the Madison Cup at T-Town. It could pretty much be used to sum up how tonight's racing went for Adrian and me. If yesterday was a promising start to 6-day racing, today was a slap in the face with the realities of inexperience. We were swarmed at the start, ended up at the back, and in short, spent the whole race either there, or somewhere behind there. It was a whole lot of chasing, catching on, chasing, realizing we were screwed, giving up the lap, chasing, catching on, and getting gapped again. All in all, I think we lost two laps on what was left of the field. There were a handful of other teams in our same position, but that doesn't really make you feel any better when you're actually racing. We missed a few exchanges at inopportune times (there really aren't any good times to miss a lap, but these were exceptionally bad), and were getting dropped like it was going out of style.

All I can say now is that I'm glad the director is running this race as an omnium, with the results of each night netting you points. Laps gained and lost don't carry from night to night. You simply finish each night, get points based on the standings, and start the next night with a clean slate. We had better scrape things together for tomorrow, because today's racing was over before it started.