Masochistic Madison of Mayhem and Misery

Tuesday night track racing has stared and it's not 4 weeks into the program. Last night was particularly painful night.

Part of what is making the recent track races so hurtful is that I am forcing myself to use a pretty tiny gear: 88.6 or a 49x15 (comparable to a 53x17) as opposed to a standard 90 (comparable to a 53x16). This tiny gear for races that hit 35 mph.

This Tuesday was special in that we had one of our first Madisons of the year. It was totally thrown together but we still got 7 teams!!!! That's pretty damn good for a random Tuesday night Madison.

So Iggy Silva III (little Iggy that use to be that one random Jr desperately hanging on the SDBC ride) asks if I would be his partner. I say "uh sure...you know I'm kinda slow compared to you. You sure you want to ride with me?"

He says he doesn't care, so I shrug and tell him I'll do my best.

We line up on the fence and the reality of how in over my friggin' head I am becomes very apparent. We have Kevin Shiller: cat 1 trackie possibly going to the Olympics, Shaun Wallace: former pro trackie who has held many national and world titles, Adam Smith renowned sprinter, John Arnold: possessor of a 1500W sprint, Chris Bennet: Local cat 2 road and trackie, Dr Alan Richburg: Cat 2 track/road, former Master's Nat'l champion......Oh, did I mention that Iggy is a Jr National Champion?
Yeah, I was in the DEEEEEEEEEEEP end. In fact, I am pretty sure that end wasn't just deep but bottomless.

I knew there was no quitting in this race. I would not do that to Iggy and I would never hear the end of that.

So we start off and things are fine and things are ticking along. Iggy and I exchange a few times and get the feel for each other throwing style.

It was a pretty short race at 35laps (Thank God!) and the first sprint was at 20 laps so things stayed mellow for the first 12 laps.

Somewhere at 21-22 laps to go the pace went from manageable to just plain old painful. I was able to time it right to throw in Iggy at a little less than a lap to go for the sprint with fresh legs: classic Madison move.

Now, notice I said "somewhere at 21-22"? I am vague on that point because the pain of the next 20 laps has somehow degraded my memory of the events that transpired after that.

We were supposed to have a mellow Madison to warm the crowd up for the big one coming in a couple of weeks.

Mellow-schmellow! After that first sprint it was just on! Kevin, Iggy and Shaun were going at it like a bunch of greyhounds going after the last mechanical bunny on the planet. I was just trying to not throw Iggy in with a huge gap to close....and keep enough oxygen in my brain so as not to run into anyone.

I missed one throw because Iggy was coming a lot hotter than I thought. I got used to those (somehow!!!!) and I tell you it's damn fun being accelerated from 15mph to 30mph+ in about 2 secs!!!

Somehow I managed not to get dropped (don't ask me how! I don't think I was actually conscious) and got to about 4 laps to go when Iggy Sr asked if I wanted Iggy to be thrown at 1 or 2 laps to go.

The question I was asking was "Why do you think I can do math now!?!??!! There is no oxygen in my math centers of my brain!!!"
I didn't say that out loud...all I could manage was a "mumble-mumble-Wha?-mumble mumble"
Yeah, no oxygen to the speech centers either.

I stick it and get ready to throw Iggy in for the last sprint and things got really fuzzy as Kevin and Shaun started to wind it up. I just remember desperately trying to discern Iggy's black jersey from the other colors. This was hard as my vision was narrowing. I'm not sure if this was a because we were approaching the speed of light or was my brain shutting down to oxygen-debt.

I think I threw him in, I just don't remember.

You know what they say about track racing: Turn and Burn.
Yep, I turned and I buuuuuuuuuurned.