On Friday night I hi-jacked the black company's sales Porsche 911 GT Turbo, picked up Ludwig and Tom, strapped our black leather bags to the spoiler and our Ridley bikes to the top and off we were to spend a first night in a luxury hotel in Maebashi.
Slept bad, had an even worse breakfast but when we arrived at Gunma CSC the sky was steel blue and it was warm enough to enjoy the ride - perfect cycling weather. Tom and me were starting in D class and Ludwig has his first start in X class.
I managed to damage the rear derailleur of the bike during transport and was suffering all the race from slipping gears. I went to Nagai-san immediately after the race to fix it - luckily he could.
Tom pulled me through the race but it was to no avail: shortly before the finish of the 8th lap we got overlapped by the D class field and were disqualified. I don't want to put my bad performance on the damaged derailleur. Or on the lack of warm-up. I was just doing not as well as I thought I could. Poor Tom, he was cheated out of 4 of his planned 12 laps.
But when I went home later and checked the results against the point rankings, my closest competitor also got lapped and the next closest starts now in C class and is out of the D class ranking. So before the last race I have a lead of 79 point on the number 2 and 90 points on the number 3; there are no other riders in the competition for the first place. With 60 points for attendance and 30 points depending on the finish, I just need to complete the last race to become D class champion. Or I can even skip the race and speculate that #3 will not finish first in the last race (to collect 90 points) and/or that #2 will not finish 5th or better in the last race (to collect 79 points or more). With a best result of 13th place for both of them that seems unlikely.
Ludwig did a good job in his first race, he was only lapped in his 7th lap of the x class race, if he would have gone a little faster, he would have been able to finish this 8 lap race. For a start he did a very impressive job.
We were back in Tokyo by 3 PM already. I guess this is the last time I raced in Gunma, next year I will concentrate on the flat races, some favourites (Fuji Hillclimb, Itoigawa Fast Run) and try the bank.
Slept bad, had an even worse breakfast but when we arrived at Gunma CSC the sky was steel blue and it was warm enough to enjoy the ride - perfect cycling weather. Tom and me were starting in D class and Ludwig has his first start in X class. I managed to damage the rear derailleur of the bike during transport and was suffering all the race from slipping gears. I went to Nagai-san immediately after the race to fix it - luckily he could.
Tom pulled me through the race but it was to no avail: shortly before the finish of the 8th lap we got overlapped by the D class field and were disqualified. I don't want to put my bad performance on the damaged derailleur. Or on the lack of warm-up. I was just doing not as well as I thought I could. Poor Tom, he was cheated out of 4 of his planned 12 laps.
But when I went home later and checked the results against the point rankings, my closest competitor also got lapped and the next closest starts now in C class and is out of the D class ranking. So before the last race I have a lead of 79 point on the number 2 and 90 points on the number 3; there are no other riders in the competition for the first place. With 60 points for attendance and 30 points depending on the finish, I just need to complete the last race to become D class champion. Or I can even skip the race and speculate that #3 will not finish first in the last race (to collect 90 points) and/or that #2 will not finish 5th or better in the last race (to collect 79 points or more). With a best result of 13th place for both of them that seems unlikely.
Ludwig did a good job in his first race, he was only lapped in his 7th lap of the x class race, if he would have gone a little faster, he would have been able to finish this 8 lap race. For a start he did a very impressive job.
We were back in Tokyo by 3 PM already. I guess this is the last time I raced in Gunma, next year I will concentrate on the flat races, some favourites (Fuji Hillclimb, Itoigawa Fast Run) and try the bank.Michael nervously waiting for his rankings print-out...
2 comments:
Don't say "Poor Tom"...I had a fantastic time! I really enjoyed the gentle ups and downs of the Gunma track. My only regret is that I could not achieve my goal of enticing Michael enough to stick to the peloton and profit from the easy drafting. The carrot I was holding out obviously was not alluring enough. Next time I will be pulling an ice cream cart for you Michael! What's your favorite flavor anyways?
Preliminary results are out now on the JCRC site:
D class : http://www.jcrc-net.jp/kekka08/0809/s0809d1.html
X class : http://www.jcrc-net.jp/kekka08/0809/s0809x1.html
And just this morning I found out, that the Saiko race will also count in the JCRC championship, so I still need to attend two races, not only one.
Our investment bankers headhunting Porsche driving non-violin making foreigner made a good showing in the A class race:
http://www.jcrc-net.jp/kekka08/0809/s0809a1.html
Goro finished in the same race in 48th position, being close to become lapped; something must have happened, I am sure that he can do better than that.
I skip the icecream and try to loose some more pounds before the decisive races of the season, I guess.
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