Masters NCNCA District (State) Track Championships, 8/3-4/2019

By Dennis Pedersen

My District Track Cycling Championships this year were very similar to last year's Districts in many ways. Once again Districts were not my priority, though still a very important milestone, more just preparation for my main goal. Unlike last year, though, I wasn't going to race at the UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships. This year my only goal was racing in the USAC Masters Track National Championships.

Like last year, I trained right through our Districts, using the races that weekend as training and reference points on my training progress. For this season I hired a different strength-training coach, Syon Shaddox, also at Santa Cruz Strength. He did a fabulous job of helping me build strength through the winter and spring, and maintain my full strength from that point on through the present. That's pretty amazing.

On May 1st I shifted my training emphasis from strength-building to on-the-bike training, once again with my trusty Coach, Jeff Solt. One of the interesting, to me anyway, things I've learned from my training is that the less I ride and the more time I spend in the gym the faster I get on the track. Jeff has been trying to teach me that for a long time, so Syon's help has been invaluable to that end.

Saturday, Match Sprints

On the morning of our Sprints (you can read about the various types of track races on the NCVA site), at Hellyer Park's Velodrome in San Jose, I did a nice job of warming up and doing two flying 100m sprints to gauge my legs. Unfortunately, they felt really weak. So I ended up going for 96.4" gearing (50x14t) instead of the 98.4" I had planned on using for our qualifying flying 200m timed runs. It was also a bit windy. And, because my Zipp wheels have tires only suitable for the indoor wooden track in Los Angeles, not on Hellyer's oval concrete track, I only had my warm-up wheels for this.

My flying-200m qualifying run (photo: Jeff Vander Stucken).

Though the defending Champion, for the previous three years, I ended up with a startlingly slow flying-200m qualifying time of 12.54 seconds. I don't remember the last time I was that slow, so that was extremely disappointing. This slow time seeded me as 4th out of the five riders there. That meant I had to start off with a ride against the 5th qualifier, so that the final rounds could be between four riders. Several people commented on my odd choice of wheels, and fortunately Tony Colicchio loaned me his deep dish wheels for the actual races.

So, as the only ride in the semifinals, I rode against Joe Atmore. I drew number 1, so I led the two-lap race out. I did a decent job of holding Joe off, and prevented him from getting a nice run at my draft, and was able to beat him with a nice gap. My goal was to not burn more energy than I had to, and I think I succeeded.

My first ride against Joe Atmore (photo: Jeff Vander Stucken)

For the finals, I was now required to race against the fastest qualifier, Rich Rozzi (also my teammate for the Team Sprints, by the way). Rich had qualified with a very nice 11.91 seconds. So I knew I had my work cut out for me. In our first ride, Rich led the race out, and did a nice job of slowing down when needed to prevent me from getting a gap to run a nice fast run around him. I wasn't able to surprise him, and I probably didn't do a great job of trying to open up a gap. In the end, I tried to come around him on the last lap and was never able to.

In my second ride against Rich I led the race out, bumping his elbows a little, BMX-style (Rich is also a longtime pro BMX racer). I did a very similar job to what he had done, and when I jumped with 3/4 of a lap to go, I did a good job of preventing him from being able to run around me with a surprise attack. Unfortunately, as we came through turns 3 and 4, the exit from turn 4 benefited him more than me, because he was higher on the track, and he beat me by inches at the line. So I was out of the Gold round.

While Rich went on to race against Bill Nighan (2nd qualifier, at 12.07) for the Gold medal, I was racing against Jim Lawrence, of Colorado Springs (3rd qualifier, at 12.3), for the Bronze medal. I didn't know out-of-state residents could compete here, but I guess he was eligible to compete but just couldn't win a State Championship.

Anyway, for the first ride, I led Jim out. It ended very similarly to my ride against Joe. For our second ride, Jim led the race out, and I jumped over him in turn 3 when he slowed too much. I looked back and I had a nice gap because I had surprised him, and I just went pretty hard. As I looked back I saw the gap become huge, and at that point I just slowed down and soft pedaled for half a lap to the finish line. I had noticed that my legs felt better as the morning progressed, but beating a faster qualifier was still somewhat of a surprise, and very welcome. Bronze wasn't my goal, but then again, I didn't really have any goals for our Districts this year.

Sunday, Timed Events

A somewhat unexpected contrast to my Saturday morning warm-up, I felt pretty good on Sunday morning during my warm up. A few minutes before my start, I did a few box jumps onto the podium as part of my warm up too. In fact, my legs felt electric with energy. I know that sounds weird, but it was true. I stuck with my original choice of a 94.5" gear (49x14t) for my 500m Individual Time Trial.

As always, the 500m ITT is from a standing start with the riders being held up while strapped into their bikes. I got a good start after the timer countdown. Pedaling hard through the corners is always a bit of a challenge, but I managed to do so. I even got that tunnel vision that happens when I'm really on it, and noticed my legs completely exploding for the last half lap, so I suspected that I had given 100% when I crossed the finish line.

Yes, my 500m ITT was good, with a PR tying time of 36.23! I won Gold, beating my Team Sprint teammates Martin Harris and Rich Rozzi by several tenths. This definitely made up for my poor Saturday performance, and I was super stoked. Going from a low to a high like this makes racing exciting. Wow. That also asserted my place on our team. I started my training later than they had, so I perhaps had more to prove, and this helped.

Martin Harris, me and Rich Rozzi on the
500m ITT podium (photo: Jeff Vander Stucken)

We had several hours of waiting around in the 86-degree heat for the Team Sprint to start. It's this way every year, and it's kind of draining. Finally though, it was time for us to race. I warmed up on the rollers a little bit, plus on the track with a rolling start for warmup.

Just to add a bit of drama, our former teammate, Bill Nighan, managed to form a team to race against us. Brian Moore, my teammate at Nationals in 2016 (where we won Gold), plus George Miranda, my Team Sprint teammate at Worlds in 2017, joined Bill to race against us.

As we lined up for our Team Sprint start, I felt pretty comfortable. I'm the starter, or man 1. One point in my favor for our start was that my holder didn't prevent me from rolling backward when I prepared for the end of the countdown. As a result, I had a couple of inches to run into to get a head start on the timer. This is not against the rules, as it's not my fault, and I did not cross the start line before the timer finished it's countdown. So I exploded out of the start, gapping Rich, who was followed closely by Martin. It took Rich the entire first lap to catch me, but that gave him a really nice run into lap 2, and Martin stayed close to him the whole time. That was awesome to see, as it is critical for our speed when we go to Nationals. Interestingly, Rich had tired legs on Sunday, while I had the tired legs on Saturday.

So, we ended up with a 1:11.67 time. That was pretty good, especially considering the windy conditions, though still a bit short of my Team Sprint in 2016 of 1:10.96. And we beat Bill's ad hoc team pretty handily, at 1:14.54.

So, Districts was pretty good for me, and yielded me two more Golds for a total of 11 District Championships I've earned over the last few years. Definitely motivating as we lead up to Nationals, in Los Angeles, August 26 through September 1. The field is already stacked, so we will need to be at our best.

If you've read this far, congratulations!