Sat, Jan 20/07 – Women’s Individual Pursuit
 
Today is day 2 at the Track World Cup in L.A. Over 290 riders from 50 teams and 35 countries are racing this weekend.
 
I just got back from the track where I raced in the Women's 3 km individual pursuit. I felt good warming up and also felt quite relaxed going into today's race. One of my goals was to be relaxed going into my first World cup race, so I was happy with with how I felt.
 
I had a great start out of the starting gate, but didn't settle in after sitting down. This is where I made a mistake. When I came around after 1 lap, I misheard Steve tell me my split time. I thought he said a number which was slow, but in fact, it was faster than I should be going. He said 2-5, which meant 22.5 seconds for my first lap from a standing start, but I interpreted it as 25, as in 25 seconds, so I picked up the pace when in fact, I needed to chill out. By lap 2, I was doing 18.4 seconds, when my ideal pace was 19.0. Basically, I blew myself out for the first 500 metres and struggled for the last 2500 metres - a long way to struggle! I rode the first 40 seconds of the race way above my capacity and my legs were screaming with lactic acid buildup. I still managed to hold 20.0 seconds per lap, but ended up with a time at least 10 seconds slower than I know I was capable of doing today. My final time was 4:03 and placed me 16th.
 
In training this week, I was doing kilo's at low 3:50's pace and was barely out of breath so I know that my fitness is there and I just made one mistake. Each race is a learning experience and I've learned that it's important to acknowledge what happened, learn from it, make adjustments and move on. This is all a part of elite level sport and I'm looking forward to the World Cup in Manchester in a month from now where I will have another chance to ride the Pursuit.
 
In the meantime, tomorrow is the Women's Scratch race, so the weekend is not over!! I'm looking forward to this one. The qualifier is only 5km and will be blazing fast!
 
The "Team R.A.C.E. Professional Track Team" has garnered alot of interest. Lots of people are asking me about the newest UCI Professional track team on the circuit, and I'm proud to be representin' here in L.A. Thanks to everyone for their support in this endeavour!
 

 
Talk to you soon
Julia
www.juliabradley.net