The Pursuit

I got finished with USADA at 9PM after the Kilo and was in bed by 10:30. But I could not sleep. I was reflecting on the Kilo, the jersey, the probable trip to Worlds, oh, and the Pursuit the next day. Kilo win or not, I was still looking at the Individual Pursuit as my target race of the week. I woke up with sore legs and hoped my warm -up would get them feeling better. The IPs went off around noon so I had about 15 hours to recover.

My warm-up went well and I went to wait my turn. I was more nervous than I had been the day before. I was shaking just a little as I clipped in. I flubbed my start just a bit, I did not pop my hips hard enough and didn't really get the bike rolling until my right leg came around for the downstroke. Once again, I sat down half-way through the turn, then I stood back up on the straight away and got into the aero bars later than I did the night before. I came through lap one and my second half split was 9.5, perfect. Lap 2 was an 18.1 and I freaked out, that was .4 sec too fast and I stopped pedaling so lap 3 was 19.1. That was too slow so I had to pick it up. I caught the guy that started on the opposite side of the track on lap 4 or 5 and took way too long to get around him. My time that lap was 19.7, then I rolled a high 18, a pair of 19.3s, and I quit getting splits with a Kilo to go. I was falling apart in the last few laps and was bouncing sponges while trying to hold a good line. I finally finished with a time of 3:56. It was not what I wanted to ride. I was looking to run about 3:50, but the race was over and I went wait for the rest of the heats to finish. I was looking at the lap splits and started to realize that no one was having a fast ride Edit: Everyone was riding slower than the splits run in practice the previous day pointing to some external factor keeping speeds lower than they should have been. and I might still have a shot at the podium.

I was sitting on the trainer when the USADA chaperon from the previous evening walked towards our pit area. I asked if he was looking for me and he was. The first thing I did was too look at the sheet and see what I had placed. It was second. Fair enough, a first and second at my first track nats was more than I imagined leading up to the race!