Heathpack 

There will likely be open cabins on some of these boats....

Fun track session today. Whew! I was actually a little worried because there was a junior race right after our Intro session and since these intro sessions also double as the 1-day certification classes for people who ride other tracks, there was the chance there'd be juniors looking to get certified before their race. Fortunately, everyone in the course was solid. Two women who ride and race up at Hellyer in San Jose, one whippet-like fast local 20ish year old who only rides fixies but had no track experience. The instructor had these three ride together. Then a strong guy with track experience, former Army helicopter pilot, who did his 4th session (so I'd ridden with him twice already before today, he's just very sane and easy to ride with) and the kid from last week who doesn't even ride a bike but is a former collegiate track (as in running and high jump) athlete- fit and maybe not so steady on the bike but a quick learner and listens well. I was riding with these two guys but newby was put on the tail of our paceline and instructed to keep two bike lengths back. So the whole thing was way more in-control this week.

I was early on account of trying on the aero stuff that fitter had. (Sweet new helmet coming out and it fits me well.) So I had my bike all set up and ready to go, was a little more prepared to be self-sufficient about it this time. Mr Helo was a little late and the instructor needed to help newby set up his bike and then to explain the peculiarities of the VSC track to the first-timers, so he sent me out to ride some warm up laps on my own which was completely perfect for me because I just wanted to spend some time rolling around on the bike.

Then he got Mr. Helo and Newby and I going. The big agenda item for the day was to practice/learn exchanges so we started with just riding in a paceline and riding high up on the track in one of the corners and then coming back down. Twenty laps of doing that every other lap and then we took a break while the other group went out and did their thing.. Then twenty laps of Mr Helo and I doing exchanges every other lap and Newby just riding on the pole line at the back. I have video of this, I'll try to upload it when we get home. I had zero concerns about Mr Helo but I was worried Newby would do something weird and we'd get into a crash. But looking at the video, he pretty much always did what he was supposed to and the whole thing was pretty well-ordered.

After this, I was surprisingly tired and we had only 20 minutes left. I was ready for a recap at the end, but the other group wanted to do some flying 200s. Instructor had Mr Helo go out and demonstrate and the other group rolled out to the start area. I tried to bow out, being tired and not really sure I wanted to go that high up on the track. Instructor wanted me to just sort of do one, go however high up I wanted, just get the idea of the flow of these efforts. For those of you who are unfamiliar, in a flying 200, you have 3 laps to get yourself up to speed way high up on the track near the balustrade, then you come down from the height at speed and sprint along the pole line at the bottom of the track (because that's the shortest distance around the track and the idea is to do it in the shortest time) for 200 meters, which is 80% of one lap. So I did possibly the worlds slowest flying 200, kind of like a turtle whereas everyone else was riding like whippets, and I only went up the track maybe 3/4 of the way. But it was pretty fun.

I was sore when I woke up this am and had to stretch a bunch to even get going. The fit of the bike seemed ok to me, except that the amount of drop when I was riding in the drops seemed pretty generous to me, so I was getting a sore neck and shoulders when riding. I'm surprisingly tired/sore now considering it was maybe only 30-40 minutes total on the bike today.

Pic is me in front, Mr. Helo behind me and Newby dutifully riding off the back. Video of the exchanges when I can get to it.

Curious @valygrl, what did you guys do in your recent track taster session? Just wondering how these sessions go at other tracks.