Enough of PIR

Last night, I “raced” a bicycle at PIR for the second time this year.  What a freakin’ cluster…

I’m a Cat 4, and I get what that means.  But, for God’s sake, is it so hard to pedal a bike around a 60 ft wide race track without running into stuff..?  PIR is quite wide, but not without obstacles – some care and planning are warranted.  It’s not like everybody doesn’t know what is possible…

Turn 7 was re-profiled for 2008 and it took a while to figure it out in the car (2nd gear, third gear, early turn in and throttle, rotate the car, etc…) – but everybody did.  The bikes nearly came to a stop there once last night and half the field never did work out that the track narrows at exit.  WTF?

Team mate E1 and I tooled around at the back of the field after the 2nd prime – both of us having concluded that we wanted to reduce our exposure.  The field was crawling and at times became 10 riders wide at the front (blunt end).  Every time I queued up to get into a rotation the third guy would sit up…  That’s fine – I had helped to organize the chase last week and this time my plan was to let others do some work to see if I had any sort of sprint (I don’t).  Maybe everybody else had the same plan… again. 

But, we’re Cat 3’s and 4’s – and this isn’t the friggin’ Tour de France…  It isn’t necessary to force your way between the barrier and the field in a sprint for a possible 10th place finish!!!  If you F***ed up the last lap and started the sprint 30th – you can give it a go again next week…

Somebody is going to get hurt, and I don’t really feel like I need that right now.  Racing is always a calculated risk – and the calculation says to stay away from PIR for a while.  But, I need to race something, somewhere…  I’m not much of a climber, but maybe the Tabor series will be more sensible – everybody has to work or get shelled there…  Maybe stick to the Cat4 40+ races and the harder road races or mountain bikes.  Maybe I should focus some more time on making sure a fast car is available for Rose Cup…  aaah, the warm, friendly and happy security of a roll cage…

On the up side, Wes ended up 3rd on the night – pretty good for a Cat4 in a 100 plus rider Cat3/4 field.  Well done.

But, In the end, E1 ended up on the ground on the second to last lap after riding us back to the front with 2 laps to go.  It sounded like somebody had steered him into the barrier on the finish straight – why go straight when you could be having so much fun turning..?  One of the teenagers elbowed his way between me and the barrier (using his body as first notice that he was coming through) and sprinted into the back of two guys who had sat-up after mis-timing their final efforts.  Brilliant!!!

I feel like I dodged one (or eight) last night.