August 31, 2007, Masters Track Nationals, 4000 meter Team Pursuit 50+
Trexlertown, PA 2.5 miles
This was the last day of the 2007 Masters National Track Championships.
There were three categories for the Men's 4000 meter Team Time Trial (TTT), 30+, 40+, and 50+.
In the 50+, each member of the team had to have a racing age of 50 or more.
I had registered for this event with no other team members prior to arriving in Pennsylvania.
If I couldn't find 3 reasonably fast riders that would give us a good chance for a championship, I'd just cancel my entry and get a refund.
Previous to the event, I had researched who was entered in the individual events and who did well in 2006.
My prime recruit was Jim Host, but I found it impossible to obtain contact information prior to the events.
After his completion of the individual 500m TT on Monday morning (he had ridden a second faster than me in the 500m.), I introduced myself and gave him the invitation to join the team event.
Later that evening, he was the fastest in the individual 2000m event and he got his first national championship jersey.
Later that evening he gave his confirmation that he would do the team event with me, so I felt very inspired at this point.
On the Sunday practice day prior to the championships, I had met Joe Field in the parking lot by chance and he said he was interested in doing a team pursuit, so I took his contact information.
From his resume and resultant individual 2000m time on Monday and placing just a one place and a second behind me, he seemed to have adequate strength to be given good consideration.
However this was his first serious year of racing and had also suffered a back injury in a Madison a couple of years ago, which made him a little skitterish.
On Tuesday morning, Jim was able to recruit Don Clapp, who had been 4 seconds faster than myself in the individual pursuit, good enough for 4th place.
He was currently in the process of getting 5th place in the sprints.
He was at one point the alternate for the opposing team and he appeared to prepare seriously for his events.
So we seemed to have enough strength in our members, with Jim and Don probably the strongest based on the 2000m times and I fully expected these two to give me a run for my money to hang on.
On Tuesday we did our first bit of practice, setting up a pace order, defining a start order, and doing practice at less than full speed to find the best lines and gain confidence behind the rider in front of us.
Joe had the most trouble, not keeping a good line during his time at the front.
One interesting twist was that after my 2000m individual event, I developed a sinus blockage.
It made sleep difficult and I was very worried how it would affect my riding abilities.
I also had a bit of a headache from it, although my throat would be ok.
This condition would persist well past the last day of the championships, but surprisingly seemed to alleviate during riding.
Although we planned another practice for Wednesday, we canceled it for several reasons.
We had our Points race that evening, Joe was concerned about conserving enough freshness for the points race, and I was concerned about taxing my congestion.
We did more practice on Thursday, although there was considerable traffic on the track between the morning and evening sessions and we could not practice standing starts or full speed efforts.
I tried to drill into the other members verbally with all the details that we could not practice: a hard start, keeping down on the black line, picking up the pace in the 2nd kilo, giving a good contribution during their turn at front.
We had decided on lap times of 23.8 seconds, which combined with a 4 second loss at the start, should give us a final time of about 4:50; rather aggressive, but I felt within the capabilities of our team.
The planned first kilo of 1:15.4 was very close to all of our first kilos in the individual event.
Our main rivals would include 3 riders from the second place team from last year.
They replaced their fourth rider with a very strong addition, Robert Black, who won the 2000k Mid-Atlantic championships a couple of weeks ago and was second behind Jim in this years Nationals.
However, their slowest member, Andy Buck, suffered a crash in the Points race Wednesday night, and was replaced by James Joseph, who won this years 500m TT and was second in the match sprints.
The two main contenders and their results in this years individual events contained:
| Defenders Team |
| Name |
From |
2K Time |
1K Split |
500m |
| Jim Host |
Plainfield IL |
2:28.626(1) |
1:14.769(2) |
37.326(6) |
Don Clapp |
Long Branch NJ |
2:29.407(4) |
1:15.818(5) |
|
Lionel Space |
Circle Pines MN |
2:33.811(7) |
1:15.614(3) |
38.379(11) |
Joe Field |
Portland OR |
2:34.821(8) |
1:15.874(6) |
|
| |
| Bike Line Team |
| Name |
From |
2K Time |
1K Split |
500m |
Robert Black |
Morehead City NC |
2:28.977(2) |
1:16.727(7) |
|
Scott Butler |
Nazareth PA |
2:29.340(3) |
1:15.650(4) |
36.112(2) |
| Chip Berezny (55-59) |
Easton PA |
2:32.287(2) |
1:18.879(4) |
|
James Joseph |
Brooklyn NY |
|
|
35.919(1) |
The 2K is the final results of the Individual 2000m TT, which Jim won in the 50-54 group.
Two of Bike Line's original team were in the 55-59 age group.
The next column is the 1K split time of that event.
For those that did the 500m ITT, I've included those.
The number in parenthesis's are the placings in the event.
Also, James got 2nd in the 50-54 match Sprints, Don got 5th, Jim got 9th.
Looking at the pre-race facts, we felt that our best asset was that we were a more balanced team, with each member seemingly pretty close in speed to the others.
Last year we rode two teams at a time, so we could immediately know how we were doing in comparison to the other team.
This year they rode each team individually.
The local team was given the advantage of riding last, so they know what time they needed to beat.
This year we finished with all 4 riders.
James being a sprinter on the Bikeline team, only did 2 half lap pulls and then dropped out of the race, leaving 3 to finish the job.
Don started our race, followed by Joe, Jim, and Lionel. The plan was to take half lap pulls.
Our goal was to ride 23.8 second laps (50.4 kph average, 31.5 mph).
This, with a 4 second loss at the start, should have given us kilometer splits of 1:15.4, 2:26.8, 3:38.2, and a 4:50 final time.
From our individual 1K splits, this should not have been a problem.
I had instructed Don to go all out for the first half lap, as any gap he created would be nullified by the fact that Joe would just take the lead from wherever he was at the 2/3 of a lap point and a gap wouldn't matter.
Unfortunately, Don still did not do a 100% start in fear of gapping Joe and as a consequence the following 3 of us were all in their saddles riding without much effort before the first straight was encountered.
Our first kilometer was done in 1:18.996, so we lost 3.5 seconds right from the start (Bikeline did it in 1:17.825, so a 1.2 second loss on them right there).
We had a timer/helper marking our schedule and we were a bit behind from the beginning and then falling farther behind with each lap.
By the time my second turn came, I felt we needed to pick it up and I increased the pace from 49.2 to 51.3 kph (see graph below) giving a full lap pull (instead of the planned half lap) to give a little more recovery time for the others and establish the faster pace.
By the time we got to the half way point, I'm yelling "Allez, Allez" quite a lot to try to get the pace picked up.
Jim was in front of me and I was sure he was strong enough to go a bit faster.
When Joe was in front I'd be yelling "Up, Up, Up" in hopes that he'd pull up track and let Jim come through early as his pace was the slowest and dragging us down; unfortunately he could not hear me.
I took another full lap pull, getting it up over 52 kph in my excitement to get some speed back and settling back down to 51.0 kph at the end.
Don came through and maintained the pace, but Joe dropped us back down to 48.1 kph.
On Jim's next pull, he dropped onto the blue apron on turn 2 and ran right over 2 sponges, sending them flying at the rest of us.
In a previous heat, a sponge had been hit, got tangled in the following rider's wheel, and sent him to the hospital, so it may have freaked out Joe a bit with his already instilled nervousness.
Joe was so uncomfortable, that most of the time he was leaving a bike length gap behind Don, sometimes a length and a half.
I took another full lap pull, this time slightly accelerating all the way and handing it over at 52.1 kph.
However, all the others were giving a pace below 49 kph after that. I was yelling more "Allez" to no avail.
My breathing was not taxed and my heart rate wasn't anywhere close to threshold (I can maintain 183 in a TT and the peak I hit at the very end was only 184 bpm).
So when my final turn came, I picked up the pace to over 50 kph again, but I dared not go any faster without dropping the team and not contributing my efforts to the result.
I decided to just go all the way to the finish (1.5 lap pull) as steady and as fast as I thought the others could remain in contact. Don finished on my wheel and Joe and Jim were just behind him.
We ended up about 7 seconds slower than planned, with a 4:57.
Average cadence for me was 105 rpm in a 101.8 inch gear.
| |
1K |
2K |
3K |
4K |
| BikeLine |
1:17.825(1) |
2:30.797(1) |
3:43.318(1) |
4:55.827 |
| Splits |
|
1:12.972(1) |
1:12.521(2) |
1:12.509(1) |
| Defenders |
1:18.996(2) |
2:32.188(2) |
3:44.359(2) |
4:57.561 |
| Splits |
|
1:13.192(2) |
1:12.171(1) |
1:13.202(2) |
| Planned Pace |
1:15.4 |
2:26.8 |
3:38.2 |
4:50.0 |
| Splits |
|
1:11.4 |
1:11.4 |
1:11.4 |
| Last year |
1:17.543 |
2:29.074 |
3:40.699 |
4:51.491 |
| Splits |
|
1:11.531 |
1:11.625 |
1:10.792 |
I was extremely disappointed and felt we had failed at every step.
We still finished rather close with all of these failings, demonstrating that the win was within our reach.
In restrospect there may have been some things that would have brought home the gold:
1) We should have done more full speed training, rather than 75% speed efforts that were intended to not wear us out.
2) I should have taken the start to make sure we got through the first half lap at full speed.
3) We should have made Joe more aware that if he was not comfortable in the pace line, to just drop out.
4) If I could have predicted how much stronger I was going to be than the rest, I should have taken full lap pulls everytime, or maybe even more 1.5 lap pulls.
Summary
Start
Time |
Distance
(Miles) |
Starters |
Duration |
Weather
(Deg F, mph) |
Climbing
(Feet) |
Speed avg
(MPH) |
Speed Max
(MPH) |
HR avg
(BPM) |
HR max
(BPM) |
HR waking
(BPM) |
Calories Burned
(Kcal) |
| 1:05 pm |
2.5 |
12 |
4:51.491 |
82, light |
0 |
30.9 |
33.5 |
169 |
181 |
49 |
100 |
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