This last weekend was always going to be a big one.  We had track racing on Saturday at Blackburn, which had a keiren, and I wanted to do well in that, then I had to do some work at a client site in the evening doing part of a server migration, Sunday was up very early (5:30ish) to get down to Lang Lang to do my corner marshalling for a road race, then motorpacing Neil the week out from the Warny, home to have dinner with my Dad (60th b'day)

Or so the plan went.  Of course, it got busier.

Saturday went well on the track, in the scratch race I did a couple of longer turns for Dino before pulling out to save energy for the keiren.  With 91.8" on for the day and racing C grade I kinda expected to win.  Doug split us up into two bunches of 4, so the first 3 were through to the final.  I drew the first heat, along with Dino and a few non-sprinters.  It was pretty windy, so the bike was the place to be.  I got the bike from the start and when it pulled off I had a junior behind me (perfect) as a buffer, I kicked hard on each straight and sat up on the corners, and won by quite a way, but did use quite a bit of steam to do so.

We had about 15 mins or so to recover before the final.  Wayne Arazny had made it through (no surprise there) as had Dino.  Right .. it's still pretty windy.  I missed the bike but the young junior who got it relinquished it when I made it clear that I wanted it, afterwards he told me he didn't want the bike anyway, which was why he was so easy to dislodge.  So I have the wheel again and the best sit into the headwind.  With 1.5 laps to go it pulls off, I've been watching Wayne over my shoulder and see him looming up on the blue line.  I kick moderately hard down the back straight into the wind, no-one comes over, I sit on the corner, still no-one, but Wayne is close, I can sense him there.  Where's Dino?  Up the front straight with the tailwind I kick again, still nothing, Wayne makes his move around the back straight into the wind and gets a nose in front into the last corner, I still have the lane, but I'm fading fast, and Wayne has the beans to hold his lead and get me by half a bike.  Doh!   Dino takes third after fluffing the start and having to come from a long way back.  Second will have to do! It was a pretty slow race, my powertap showed a maximum speed of only 51.5km/h. the heat was only a 52km/h race too, so the wind had a big effect.

After that we had a motorpace, but I wasn't interested and pulled out after 2 laps with no legs and no heart for it.

After that I had to go in to a client site in town and work for hours on a server build, and eventually got home around 1:30am.  Up at 5:45 to get to Lang Lang by 7:30 for the Lang Lang road race, where I was a corner marshal at my usual corner.

I've been the corner marshal for that corner for years now, it's my home away from home at Lang Lang!  Neil Robinson hooked up with me there at around 12 and once B grade had come past for their second lap, we packed up and headed out to Modella to do a motorpaced lap for his preparation for the Warny next weekend.

I was pleased to find that Neil had ridden the Tour of Timor recently (wow!) and done pretty well.  He's always been a naturally talented rider and able to do just about everything.  I didn't know he'd been racing that well though!

The Modella course we used was the flat one.  It was quite windy and there's little shelter and the course we rode is essentially a square. Neil took his camera(!) and snapped a few photos while we warmed him up, but once the pace was on there was no camera use!  After a solid hour he was trashed and my wrist aching.  Time to go home.

There'd been a crash on the M1 freeway, someone had tried to see if trees move out of the way of speeding cars, and the freeway was blocked for miles.  I don't know if the driver of the car lived, but it looked pretty unlikely.  Ugly .. People driving cars really need to understand risk better than they do.  Home eventually by 5ish only to find that the client site I'd been at on Saturday night wasn't on the 'net.  Right ... In I go again, only to find that they'd lost all power to their floor (co-incidence!  Imagine ...).  After stuffing around with the fuse box, calling a sparky, finding that there was another switch box in a room we didn't have access to, the call was 'bugger it, I'm going home'.  Dropped in at Rich's for a pizza then home to sleep.  Dad was moving house this weekend and was still working on it, hopefully I'll catch up with him this week for dinner.

Phew ...