Wednesday Night World's

Well it's been over a year since I made the journey into the heart of Ontario's manufacturing, business, and industry mecca (also known as Mississauga) on a Wednesday night to tempt fate at one of the mid-week-world-championship races. I remember these events being faster and more agressive than what is typically seen in a Pro 1,2 category race on a Saturday or Sunday in the dead of Summer, and tonight's race did not disappoint.

After almost zero warm-up for yours truly, the gun went off and pretty soon we were sprinting hard out of every corner for at least the first twenty or thirty minutes. Nice. I chalk this up to a couple of things: a) for many of us doing these races, these are simply for training and the harder we can make the workout on ourselves the better, so we will definitely be willing to burn through every calorie possible; b) for many of the local guys who have the ability to do these races EVERY week, these qualify for serious bragging rights, so they are also going to be riding ballistically hard.

You know what though, that's what makes these hump-day slugfest's great - going out training by yourself would be pretty ineffectual compared to this. All the better to make you stronger for the bigger races. The downside is that the racing can be kind of crazy and doesn't really resemble the relative safety of a normal weekend race where for the most part I trust the course and my fellow competitors. Don't get me wrong here now, the Wednesday night event is GREAT and all, but the majority of the course is marked out with bright-orange traffic cones sitting on the ground to steer the riders in the right direction, and these somehow seem to be attracted to a bicycle going 50km/h. Riders are constantly swerving, chopping, and generally sketching their way around these things at the last possible second, and on more than one occasion tonight someone maybe 2 or 3 riders in front of me would unintentionally clip one of these things sending it flying up in the air about shoulder and head height. I tell ya, I'm not that keen on wearing one of these things on my head something like the friggin' hat that Mush-Mouth used to wear in the Fat Albert cartoons (this time it would be without any holes to see out of)...so I pretty much spent the entire race in a sort of "self preservation" mode. Needless to say I was so preoccupied with this sketchiness that I missed the race winning break as it went up the road and got mixed in all-camouflaged-like with the lapped and scratch-race riders. Definitely not what you want to do if you are looking to win.

Whatever. Seriously.

We went out, had a cool venue to race our bikes, and came away with a pair of legs that felt like they had had a good whoopin' by a half dozen kids with whiffle-ball bats...what more could you ask for in the middle of the week.