Sent by Linda Elgart
The story starts a week before nationals, if you want to follow along. Since the track is at almost 6000 feet, my husband John and I decided to take a rather leisurely road trip at altitude, to try to acclimate. We drove to Winnemucca, NV, and did a great road ride on dirt, spent the night, then went to Salt Lake to spend two nights with my brother and family, and continued with great meals, nice rides, and being at 5000’. The next night we spent in Laramie, Wyoming, a quaint college town at over 7000 feet! Finally, on to Colorado Springs. Right. We are here to race track.
Neither of us was particularly ready. We’d done one day of track racing at districts plus one Tuesday night. No individual pursuits at all. Plus John has had back issues all year. But, one only lives once, so here we were.
Race Reports:
2K Pursuit: 6th place, but a PR. I went out way too slowly on the start, (no one does the first lap 7 seconds slower than the subsequent laps!) but then settled into a nice even pace in the 27 mph/27-ish second range, for the rest of the race. I can’t really complain, as I set a PR of 2:52, though with the faster track it about corresponds to my time last year at Hellyer of 2:54. Competition was tough. The winning time in women 50-54 was 2:44. I know all too well that this would go much better if I trained for it. At least I remembered how to pace myself at even laps.
John was also 6th, but wasn’t feeling well at all, and his time was way off of last year. The winning time in the men 60-64 was 2:36, which was 2 seconds faster than John’s winning time of 2008. But not all days are good ones. As it happens, he was really coming down with something, and turned out to be sick and finished with the racing.
Points Race: 1st. This year it was an actual race with 10 people, though half of them were in the older age groups; 4 in the 55’s and one in the 60’s. I had to be careful of the Hammer team at their local track. They failed to gang up on me last year, when I took all the sprints in a very small and not too fast race, so I expected them take some revenge. Shannon Youngquist, who was almost equal to me in pursuit last year, was several seconds faster now. There was another from the team in my age group, plus Marsha Macro (60’s) with no competition, who was free to work with her teammates. There were others teams, too. Patricia Marzi from Salamander Racing beat me in my pursuit round by 2 seconds, and Melanie Peterson (Major Motion) turned out to be my toughest competitor once the race got going.
Before the race I had John tell me the sprint laps: 24, 18, 12, 6, 0. My mantra. 24, 18, 12, 6, 24, 18, 12, 6…I think some people don’t keep this in mind. It’s important.
The sprints went like this:
I led out the first and Melanie Peterson came around. Place: 2nd. I went long and really dug too deep.
On the second I was 4th. We were all stacked up at the line. I was tired. Shannon won.
I took the third sprint by coming around. Meanwhile, people were attacking. Marsha went off the front, but her teammate chased her down with me on her wheel!
On the 4th sprint I let Jane Rinard take it, as she was in the 55’s, and I took 2nd.
I could hear the announcer, John Beckman, and I knew that coming into the final I was in the lead, but only by 3 points ahead of Melanie. I had good shelter and was able to pass her, and everyone else, at the line to take it with 17 points.
The race was quite aggressive, and maybe I did too much work bringing back breaks. I could definitely feel the altitude, and also that I was being marked. It was getting harder and harder to recover. But the track is so smooth and fun, and the weather was perfect; cool, and completely still.
So, wow, another one! I wasn’t really expecting it.
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