2K Pursuit...I am used to doing 8 laps on the 250 track with lap times called every lap. At Marymoor, we decided to get 1/2 laps called. We use Roger Young as a coach when in Carson and Roger attended the championships and provided advice and assisted with timing. I decided on my schedule and gave it to Roger. It seemed like most everyone who had done pursuit was a little slower so I increased my lap times and figured if I had any juice left, I would light it up with 600 meters to go. I hit my 1/2 lap times and turned it on with 1 1/2 to go. My opponent was up by 3.8 seconds in the first kilo and I won by .9 seconds to grab the short podium.
This was my first pursuit podium and my fourth time at nationals and once at worlds doing pursuit.
The start
Getting getting times
Team Pursuit... I did not have a team going into nationals and I was approached by a racing friend to join him and another racer to do the 65+ 3K team pursuit. I do a lot of team pursuit, but ad hoc pursuit teams do not win at nationals. You race and have fun doing it. The problem is team pursuit needs a lot of practice to get close and race fast. The other guys did not have time to practice and so we just lined up and raced it. One other glitch was that our fourth decided not to race team pursuit and save himself for team sprint. So we did it with 3 men versus the other teams have 4.
Team Sprint... The short podium 1st, 2nd and 3rd individual pursuit racers (included me), got together to do team sprint. I have done team sprint many times but the other two racers had not. I was unsure about this because although team sprint looks easy, it is hard to hold the team together and get the gearing and order correct.
We decided that I would start and Roger would be at the curve and signal me that the other racer was on and then I was to light it up. It sort of worked but you can see in the pics that we had some gaps. However, it was an amazing first effort by my teammates doing team sprint. If we practiced, we could do much better and I should probably go second.
Start
First exchange...you can see the gap behind me.
I had a great time racing and socializing. We had fabulous weather and Marymoor was an excellent host. The hotdogs were to die for and what is with the beer sequester? I had to leave my beer with this lovely woman when I left the yellow chain area.
