Today was the final day of the individual Track Championships. On Saturday, Will took gold in the cat-4 match sprints (again, nice work Will), so the pressure was on to keep the Team O winning streak alive.

4km Pursuit: There’s really no other way to say it… Cow destroyed the field. He stopped the clock at 5:29… a personal best for him. I was up next and clocked a 5:36; it was extremely painful. It certainly sucks going early, as you have to wait to see if someone will beat your time. Luckily, it turned out most people came in around 5:50 or 6:00… so Cow took 1st and I took 3rd place.

Team Trial Championship… what a fantastic event! One of the most painful, yet rewarding races you can do all year. Jess, Riz, Ian, and I piled into my car and enjoyed that wonderful 1.5hr drive to Corvallis. Along the way we got eyeballed by 2 state troopers (curious of our shaved legs, I'm sure) and had an interesting time at the rest stop. First off, there was a line in the men's room… what's up with that? Also, the place was crawly with blue-hairs… and one particularly made a point of lighting up his ciggy while on oxygen… call me crazy, but that doesn't seem wise.

So we rolled up to the staging area plenty early and set up base camp. We checked in and chatted with the 4's who'd set up even
earlier. We talked about strategy, lessons learned from last year, and my rocking fu-manchu `stache (hopefully we'll have pics from the event posted soon so I can forward on some actions shots of the `stache). After some decent BS'ing it was time to warm-up.

 Cherry Pie was a blast. Phil and I carpooled to the race. On the ride down we talked about the team strategy. We both knew I had a shot at winning it based on the miles and training I've put in this winter. It was tough to come up with a plan since we did not know how our fitness would stack up against all the other riders. We decided on a few things that we would do; 1) ride together, staying close, 2) communicate with eachother, and 3) stay near the front. It was a nice surprise to see Ian May at the start.

I won't give a play by play of the race, since I think it's already been done quite well by Ian and Phil. What I will say is that Team Oregon rode a great race. We stayed up front, close to each other, if not right next to each other for the whole race. When it was time to reel in the break Team-O went the front and organized the chase. Phil put in heroic efforts on the front, which inspired others to join in. With 3 green jerseys up front, we managed to hide the fact that I wasn't working as hard as the others.

The teamwork between Phil, Ian and I resulted in me getting 2^nd. It would not have happened without them. Thanks guys.

-Rob A