The race started fast and nervous with a tail wind and everyone looking for a good position to round the first 180.  Our plan was to protect our good finishers and keep any attacks from getting away while staying close to the front for the turns and cross-winds.  With the fast pace and short but hard hills the occasional few who went off the front were kept in check.  At the final 90 degree turn, headed west again, the pace escalated forcing a selection of 20 or so with all BO men counted.  At the 180 turn we made an unfortunate catch of  the 45+ 4s creating confusion and some panic.  As the leaders regrouped, the speed increased with powerful drives up each of the many rolling hills to the finish further reducing the selection.  With a long dash to the line, some of the opposition’s big guns went early and faded.  At the end, a 14 or 15-man field-sprint resulted in three top-ten finishers for the BO men; Paul 2nd, Bill McGinley 3rd, and Mike Newsome 5th.  Barry, Steve and Dave (who had flatted) finished 13th, 18th and 19th.  It was a great result for the team; we garnered lots of team points with everyone working hard and riding smart.

On the final climb the pace lifted with numerous attacks by a Vitamin Cottage rider. Heather and Sharon raced smart and stayed ready for the last push to line. In the final 1K  only a handful of women remained. The course swept downhill into a brutal headwind then swung right for the final 500 meters consisting of a brutal uphill climb (and a lovely tailwind!) with the finish at the hill’s crest.  At 500 meters Heather accelerated and opened a gap on the field, with Sharon shouting encouragement to go, go ,go and make it stick! Then it was full gas to the line with Heather crossing in first place and Sharon taking sixth.

Perhaps the most impressive ride was put in by the Magenta Men’s 35+ crew of Mike Sutter, Michael Gibson, and Neal Henderson, who despite toeing the line with only 3 riders still finished 2nd in a blazing 23:26.  Not to be left out, the Magenta Women had their own entry in the competitive Senior Women Pro/1/2 category, with Kimberly Nuffer, Anne Lannan, and Heather McWilliams Mierzejewski joined by Jennifer Triplett of 911 Racing to take 4th in the fastest women’s competition with a 26:35 ride.  Well done all!

A taste of the action is provided in this brief video from the Men’s 45+ ride:

 Haystack45TTT

May 25, 2013  Flyer  Register

A new TT/TTT course timed to help you tune up for the State TT Championship.  Join us for the inaugural event.

I arrived in the UK six days before my “A” race.   This allowed for plenty of time for my body clock to swing over to the UK time zone.  In the lead up to the big day there were only short training sessions and a scratch race on my schedule.  From the beginning I felt good, so the biggest challenge was to remain calm and wait.  I patiently watched, with envy, as my competitors enjoyed the points race, an invitational 50+ scratch race, and the team pursuit. 

The day finally arrived and when the schedule for the qualifying heats was posted I was assigned heat number seven out of eight.  With last year’s champion (Steve Davis, GB) and nine-time world champion Robert Gerard-Louis (Fr) in the eighth heat my strategy was simple – a personal best effort and hope to have one of the two fastest times.  This is the requirement to get into the final round where the gold and silver medals are determined. The outcome was good even with relatively uneven pacing and less than optimal lap time call ups – 2:28.5. My qualifying ride lowered the best-posted time, to that point, by 5 seconds.  Gerard-Louis and Davis followed in heat eight where they both rode 2:32’s. I was delighted to be in finals with a chance for the gold medal.

Companion racers were talking about the easy ride I was going to have in the final, because of the 4-second gap in qualifying.  Well, we have all heard the cliché “talk is cheap” – it could not have been truer than in this case.

In the final I started on the front straight and was matched against Gerard-Louis on the back straight.  My plan was to start as I always do – fast – and my thought was if my opponent did not up his effort I would gain sight of him, in front of me, after about 1km (four laps).  A knowledgeable crowd of 100 or so looked on – that was truly an awesome feeling.  At the start the crowd noise boomed, and in fact on every lap coming through the front straight it was a tunnel of cheering.  Four laps went by quickly.  I could not see Gerard-Louis, so I knew race was not won, and my on-track support guy could not give me definitive information. 

Ride-wise everything was normal and I just kept clicking off the laps at the highest sustainable speed.  To signal the ending time in an individual pursuit match the officials fire two guns, one for the front straight rider and one for the back straight rider.  To my ears I heard one extended shot.  The crowd was cheering loudly, but I had no idea who won.  I decelerated through turns 1 and 2, and then looked at the scoreboard high above turns 3 and 4.  The result is what you already know – I am the 2012 Masters 60-64 Individual Pursuit World Champion.  The final timing was 2:29.2 versus 2:29.9, a mere .7 seconds.

I never thought I would stand on a podium, hear the U.S. national anthem, and see the American flag raised.  I’m humbled and honored to have had that experience.

So how about the pieces?  Well, many thanks to all my teammates who kept my training attitude up and continuously argued that I must go the event, to Neal who structured my training for a second peak in 2012 and included days with 2x2K efforts (obviously essential from the results above), to my moto-man (Len) who paced me all over Boulder County numerous times making my legs scream for relief, to Lars and Neal and Len who help me arrange special equipment needs, and certainly to my lovely wife Joanie who insisted I must do this event.

Still on cloud-nine, Steve

The Boulder Orthopedics Cycling team is proud to donate a men’s team kit, including shorts, jersey, leg warmers and socks, for the Hilden Family silent auction. Proceeds from the auction go to the care of Kyra Hilden, daughter of a Boulder Center for Sports Medicine senior physical therapist Tim Hilden.  Kyra suffers from a cascade of medical issues, possibly stemming from West Nile Virus. 

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