We should have gone to the Bromont track earlier! Ari and I had such a great time.
We left home Friday morning, and after about a six-hour drive, we got to our hotel in Bromont, Quebec, Canada. We quickly unpacked and went straight to the track (the Bromont National Cycling Center) to do our certification. The track is so nice. It’s a super smooth 250m wooden track, and everyone was so welcoming. We also saw some familiar faces, Jed Kornbluh and Lex Picillo.
The track certification was supposed to take two hours, but we ended up getting a “quick certification” which took Ari and me just 20 minutes or so. After the certification, we did a few more laps around the track, and Ari hopped on rollers for a little.
Saturday was race day, and it started with the Omnium: the 5km Scratch Race, Keirin, 7.5km Points Race, and 1.5km Keirin Sprint Final. One had to qualify for the Keirin Sprint Final via the earlier Keirin race, but there was no Keirin, and the final was essentially a Chariot race.
My U15 field got combined with Ari’s U17 field, but we were scored separately. I ended up winning the U15 Omnium, and Ari got 4th among some really strong U17s.
The highlight for us was the 7.5km Scratch Madison. We were super excited about this race, as this was the first time we would be doing the Madison together. The bad news was that we had to compete in the “A” field, which had some super heavy hitters in it – several UCI riders, and also a kid who competed at Junior Track Worlds.
Wow, this was a tough field, but we did better than we thought! Yes, we came in last, but we “only” got lapped twice by the top three teams and “just” once by the remaining six. That could have gone a lot worse. I never thought I would be proud of being lapped twice!
You can find all our race results here.
What a way to end the season. We had so much fun, and we can’t wait to come back.
