Day 4: Attacks

If the first three days started off with some manner of control, the final three days dispensed with the niceties. First off, Daniele was on hand, but without a bike, as it was in transit with Dave, and summarily stuck in traffic. We started a few minutes late to let him throw his wheels on, but after the thrashing Daniele dished out to us last weekend, we declined to let him warm up, and plunged into the first scratch race. He still took second, behind Quebec. That fast jerk.

The first madison didn't mess around, either. The first half of a lap was at a painfully slow roll, so I went to the front to tempo things up a bit. I guess this caught a few people unaware, so Garnett and I parleyed it into an attack. I'd like to think we made some people work, and hurt some legs, but ultimately the group came back together. The attacks didn't stop there, though. Coming into the last sprint, I had a gap on the field and threw Garnett into the race with about 4.5 laps to go. Unfortunately, I was overzealous, and threw him right into my bars, which picked the front end of my bike up, turned the wheel, and set me back down somewhere near 40 km/h. I thought I was going to hit the deck, but somehow rode away from it. It's lucky we had that gap so that no one else was around to feel my wobbly wrath. Anyway, my pedal released, and I had to skip the last exchange, spelling disaster for poor Garnett, who hit the wall with half a lap to go and was swept over by our most immediate competition, Quebec.

Somewhere in the second half of this race, Team Delhi snuck off the front and took back a lap. Ontario, Quebec, and ourselves were content to let Team London do the chasing, as they had the most at stack, but by the time they took the front, Delhi had 3/4 of a lap, and came around to rejoin the group.

In the miss-and-out I managed a third place finish, again behind Daniele, but both of us behind the surprise winner of Mike Renneboog of Team Delhi. I was bemoaning stomach cramps the whole night, but it turns out Mike was straight up vomiting during the session (several times) and even more afterwards. So I'll just keep my mouth shut there.

Things were equally fast in the last madison of the night, but for all the attacking, Garnett and I just couldn't seem to crack Team Quebec and put them down a lap. We did have success in the sprints though, and kept our lead on them to 24 points. The final standings for the night have Team Ontario in first, and they moved up a lap by reaching 100 points, while at one lap down is Team Can-Am (us) in second, followed by Team Quebec. The battle for fourth and fifth has Team Delhi leading Team London, both at 4 laps down. With more attacks in the final two days, Garnett and I will be trying to crack some legs, and gain a lap or two.