Collegiate Track Nationals

This week I traveled to Frisco, Texas with the Fort Lewis Cycling team for collegiate track nationals. I was the only freshman on the team and this is my first collegiate race, collegiate nationals and first track nationals; that's a lot of firsts. I competed in the individual pursuit 4k, kilo 1k, points race, team pursuit and Italian team sprint. 

The pursuit went well and I was in an early heat. I rode a 5:13 which was good enough for 38th place. I didn't expect this to be my strongest event. One of my collegiate team mates got third by .1 seconds and missed first by .2 seconds. 

The kilo was about the same for me. I rode a 1:12 and I was happy with that time. This race was better for me because it was cooler outside and we were racing under the lights. 

The morning of the next day I had the points race qualifier. It was 15k which is 60 laps and was very fast. I tried taking a lap on the field but I only made it halfway. I missed points the first 2 sprints and the race was neutralized because of a crash on lap 27. I won 5 points on the next sprint and I thought I was in the finals that night. 4 riders took a lap on the field which gave them 20 points. I came in 5th in the final sprint and I missed the finals by 2 spots. Disappointing but there's always next year. But one of our riders won the points race even though he was alone with no team mates!

The team pursuit was in the morning of the final day. We had a strong team lined up. I was our starting rider.  We rode a 1:12 first lap which was too fast and by lap 8 we lost a rider and it started to get really hard. We weren't smooth and we finished with 3 riders. We came in 4th by 0.5 seconds despite how chaotic our race was. This is my first time medaling at nationals, so even though we were kind of disappointed I was happy. 

The Italian team sprint is 6 laps where 2 girls ride a lap each and then 4 laps with one lap each for each guy. We didn't start out fast enough with our girls and we came in 6th even though we rode strong with the men. 

We came in 5th in the team omnium so we medaled again, so I took home 2 medals. Griffin Easter of Ritte on our team was 3rd in the individual omnium so we were very successful at this nationals. I am really enjoying riding and studying in college because it is a lot of fun. 

Dean Haas