Track racing was amazing!

Coming up to the velodrome at Blaine, MN, was probably one of the best ideas I had all year. It was simply amazing! I'm really impressed by these athletes, and their speed and abilities really blew me away.

I was shadowing the chief judge at the event, so that meant I got to stand up on the judging stand with a bird's eye view of everything. All of the events were crazy, and with a 15-second lap, it was faster than anything I've ever seen before. I've thought that 45-second laps were too short to do anything but score, but now I know better!

The two events that made the biggest impression were a flying 200m time trial, and the Madison. In the flying 200m time trial, riders got 2 laps to get 'up to speed', and then on the final lap sprint for all they are worth. The fastest time of the evening was around 11 seconds. Wow!

And in a Madison, riders race in teams of two, where they alternate which person is racing, and literally hand each other off: the racing rider grabs the hand of the resting rider, who is then pulled forward by them like a slingshot to get going. I'll just say that I had to give up on trying to do more than just watch — scoring was nearly impossible, since I could barely keep up with what was going on.

Today and tomorrow are "vacation" days, and then the Nature Valley Grand Prix race starts on Wednesday.