Canadian Track Nationals, Dieppe, NB

Track Nationals were a blast. Despite surviving a horrific head cold during the event, it was a lot of fun and great to catch up with a lot of the racers I hadn't seen in a long time and getting to know some of the others better! We stayed in a hotel in Moncton with Steph and Natasha and drove to Dieppe every morning.

"Trackies Village"

Friday morning was very dewy and led to slow pursuit times on the track. I ended up 8th overall with a time of 5:08.

Could I look more devastated? Courtesy Don Ricker for Smugmug

Points Race final

The points race was a "pain train" (as Tanya Dubnicoff called it). It was fast and furious. I made it through the qualifying 20km race unscathed, but I got lapped about 50 laps in and decided to pull out of the 40km final since I couldn't breathe anymore. The scratch race on Saturday went much better. I won the qualifying 15km race, and ended up 12th in the 30km final.

Points Race action

I'd like to congratulate Steph (bronze in sprints), Natasha (bronze in women's points race) and Felix (silver in the kilo) for their awesome efforts!

The Sunday night closing party was quite interesting to experience. It was weird to see all these elite athletes completely lose their marbles at the Pump House Pub and Cosmos Nightclub in Moncton. Everyone went WAY overboard - let's just say Mike McKorkell won the ketchup eating contest before the salt sniffing contest started. I guess they don't get out much.