About two weeks ago we finally got together a team for the Team Pursuit at Nationals: me, Haley, and Andi. We all went down to the track a couple of times and practiced our exchanges, and we felt pretty good about it. Coach Dan and I drove down to Carson on Wednesday afternoon with a full car, since we were carrying Andi and Haleys' bikes, wheels, and rollers. Andi and Haley flew in Thursday morning and in the afternoon it was time to race. We had our order set, our strategy ready, and our communications agreed on. Unfortunately, it didn't go as smoothly as we'd hoped. The plan was for Andi to start and take one-lap pulls, followed by me taking two-lap pulls, then Haley taking one-lap pulls. Our start was okay, and I floated the second lap at 19.0 seconds, then apparently Haley and I were both feeling really good, because we went much faster than we'd planned, with me doing my second lap at 18.1 and Haley holding that pace exactly. Andi was feeling the pace a little, but she did her lap well and then I was on the front again. I'm not entirely sure how it happened after that, but sometime during my two-lap pull Haley and I gapped Andi, and I heard her say "down down down" as we'd agreed. Unfortunately, shortly after I first heard it I heard something else (it may have even been a spectator saying something), and thought that she was back on, so I kept going after an brief slowdown. Once Andi was off the back even a little, it was harder for her to get back on, and I didn't realize how much we'd gapped her by until I'd finished my two laps, going at what I thought was a conservative pace. I pulled off to let Haley through and saw how far behind Andi was - not really all that far, but enough that she wasn't getting a draft at all. Unfortunately, I failed to properly communicate this to Haley, so it took us another lap and a half for us to all come together again. I stayed on front for 3 laps to spare Andi (since she'd been in the wind going full speed for 3 laps) and Haley led us through the final lap. Despite our many miscommunications, which were all of our faults, we still managed to clock a 4:00, which is not a bad time in its own right and I think downright amazing considering we spent a chunk of the race apart.
There were only four teams registered, which meant that all four teams got to ride again for the finals - 1 vs 2 and 3 vs 4. We ranked 3rd. Since there weren't any other events going on that afternoon besides the Men's Team Pursuit, we only got about 30-40 minutes before we had to race again, but even though we were tired, we were glad to get a second chance. We got off to a bit of a slow start, and we were definitely tired, but we knew the other team was tired too. Coach Dan decided that since Andi had been forced to chase us for a couple of laps, she should take half-lap pulls, and it was my job to avoid any abrupt accelerations so that she could stay safely in the draft. For the first few laps we were actually a quarter lap behind the other team, but we held it together and picked up the pace a bit, while the other team got tired and fell apart. By the end we were more than a quarter lap up on them, not far from catching them. Our time was 3:58.742, and we beat the 4th place team by nearly 8 seconds. We were all pretty thrilled to have won a bronze medal at Elite Nationals! I was lucky to have Haley and Andi on my team, they were fantastic.
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