Jake-over (Jake takes over, get it?)

Sorry for the lame title but my brain is a little spent (classes are done for the day).

Newkirk is a great guy and all, but his blogging was a little sub-par as of late. I have been pestering him to add me as a "guest" blogger for a couple weeks, and finally he took care of it. Now, to the important matters...

Our race team is finalized (in no particular order): Jake T., Jake S., Kevin, and Billy.

Quals: we had one of the earliest slots possible, and were the first ones at the track warming up. Itai took the track with all the confidence in the world and started his fly lap. His quals lap was fine, but on his exchange to Billy, he got off the bike a little awkwardly and caused the bike to hit the inside of his left knee. We scratched that attempt and had Itai cleaned up. We took the track for our 2nd attempt about 15 minutes later, and this time Itai took a very conservative approach to his exchange to Billy, and it proved to be successful, albeit slow. The other 3 riders (Billy, Kevin, and Jake S.) did their laps and completed safe exchanges. The final result of the day was us qualifying 24th. This is not the result we were expecting, and we were all a little shocked and disappointed. After thinking about it long and hard, we realized that we are not a "quals" team. During spring break, we rode laps in a pack. We simply prepared for race day and nothing more. 24th puts us on the outside of row 8, so hopefully we will be able to put the hammer down (it's hammer time), catch up with the main pack, and avoid any stupid beginning-of-the-race wrecks.

ITTs: Once again, we consider ourselves a "race day team" and didn't really practice. Sure, we did hot laps and few-lap hard-effort sets, but starting from a dead stop, tucking in to an aero position to combat the 25 mph wind gusts (no joke), and sprinting on a loose track were not part of our agenda. We all did the best we could, and our results showed our lack of total preparation.

Miss N Out: I lasted a few laps of my first heat, but took the inside lane, and got eliminated after a guy next to me took the outside and outsprinted me. Billy was the only other participant, and he didn't advance at all either. Shields and Kevin did not participate. Shields had some exam and Kevin was a sick boy (strep or some BS).

We have exactly 5 more days on the track (closed next Thursday to prep for the girls race). We had an excellent practice yesterday with all 4 guys, riding in the pack and trying to get as many as we can before breaking out and coming in to our pit. We have been blessed with beautiful weather (minus the pollen) and our "riders tans" are coming in nicely. Until race day, we plan on hitting the track hard when we can, and trying to get any pack riding jitters out of the way (mainly me, it's a result of wrecking twice in a week). We have team pursuit on Saturday, I will post more details about it on Friday.

"Success is 1% preparation and 99% perspiration"