Tag Archives: Track

First Track Weekend Race Recap!

By Rajesh Sridhar
Fast on the heels of the road season, the first race of the joint ECCC/ACCC track season took place last week at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center in Allentown, PA. The event kicked off with an intermediate level track clinic on Saturday with Marty Nothstein, a former Olympic gold medalist and the executive director of the Valley Preferred Cycling Center. While the initial parts of the clinic dealt with talking about the various track rules and etiquette, we soon got an opportunity to practice some of the track-specific race skills such as pace lining, standing starts, wall starts as well getting comfortable with the bankings in the track. Having previously raced only on the comparatively flat Kissena track, I personally found the 28 degree banked turns to be a lot more technical and equivalently, a lot fun.
Probably due to the close proximity to the Road Nats, the race had a reasonably small attendance, with a grand total of 22 racers across all categories, collegiate and non-collegiate, women and men. MIT was represented by two Men’s C/D racers, Christian and Rajesh, making it the third largest collegiate group at the competition, after Westpoint and Yale.
Thanks to the dearth of racers in the Men’s B/C category – Christian was the only one present on the day- Men’s B/C and D categories were clubbed together and the races modified to adjust for the small number of racers. A 5-lap scratch race around the 333m track was followed by kilo (the track version of ITT over 1km) and a chariot race (a short 500m race, from a standing start).
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Even though Christian missed out on winning the scratch race by a fraction of a second, he won the overall competition in the B/C/D category, after setting the fastest time in the kilo and finishing first in the chariot race. I finished 3rd in all the three races, and managed to secure the final podium position for MIT. After the main ECCC races were over, the 22 racers were grouped together into 4 teams for a fun Italian team pursuit.
We rounded off the hot sunny weekend with some delicious burritos for lunch at a nearby California themed Mexican restaurant, before starting on the dreadful 7-hour journey back home.

Stars and Stripes at Track Nats 2010

Chalk it up: MIT Cycling has another set of Stars and Stripes jerseys to add to the collection after an intense weekend of racing at Collegiate Track Nationals in Indianapolis. Big props to our other DII podium teams, DePauw and Army.

The full story goes something like this, and by “something”, I mean “stick with me, it’s been nearly two weeks and I might be forgetting details”:

Day N-2

The car gets loaded with bikes, rollers, and Mike’s enormous bag of race gear. It’s unclear how many small children are being smuggled across multiple state borders inside that bag, but it is clear the minimum number is two. Everything arrives in Ohio eleven hours later without incident. Connecticut wins for best highway patrol cars. Nothing is said about how the car got to Ohio in the off-chance that Nick’s advisor finds this blog.

Day N-1

After a breakfast involving a patented mix of ciabatta, avocados, cheese, and fried eggs, the gear arrives at the Major Taylor velodrome in Indianapolis after another couple hours of driving. The first Josh Schwartz sighting is made. The rest of the team arrives at the airport amidst Nick’s confusion about which garage level the car is parked and gets a subsequent tour of the facility. (Cake would have been dismayed to find their lyrics misused.) Laura is concerned that the boys in the backseat are eating all “her” food.

Day 1

Pursuits and pursuits! The morning session was the (long-for-the-track but the roadies are going to make fun of us) Women’s 3K and Men’s 4K pursuits. Laura wound it up and used her well-practiced bob-and-weave technique to push through to the finish in a solid 10th place finish. Zach stomped Nick’s time in the 4K, then both watched as they subsequently had their time squished like June bugs under a tractor by the pros — including Mike, who made all the early competitors look like they were out for a Sunday cruise, pulling in laps that were several seconds faster than the majority despite the high winds buffeting the oval. We also learned that it’s illegal to overtake someone who previously passed you during a pursuit, which could lead to some dastardly tactics. For fans of numbers, Mike was 1.54-sigma faster than the mean (assuming Gaussianity) with his 4th place finish, while Nick was 1.60-sigma slower; the event winner was 2.38-sigma faster (Figure 1). Zach conveniently defined the mean time.

Kilos in the afternoon followed a similar trend, this time with Nick edging out Zach (who decided to ride the first quarter lap with one foot unclipped to demonstrate what a false start should have looked like) before the pros stomped down some amazingly fast spins. Mike, of course, had enough speed to get into the top 20. Laura’s 500m pursuit, loaded with more aero than Chewie at a Zipp convention, was just a fraction of a second out of the points. Oh, and for those who are curious, the density estimate of kilo times is plotted below, showing a much stronger skew to the low times than seen in the pursuit times. Interesting. Since it was Laura’s birthday, we made a run for the high-quality craft beverages to go with a pizza dinner — and came across the “Angry Beaver” bar in downtown Indianapolis. Judging by smoke and music, it was not run by an ex-MIT student, though possibly an ex-hipster-lumberjack.

Day 2

The morning session was straight-forward: sprint qualifiers for Attack and the Loominator. The short end of the story is that we both had loads of extra time after the qualifiers to go get bagels and coffee in downtown Indianapolis. Yep, stomped. Severely. Including a stomping by Josh Schwartz, one of the top qualifiers. The bagels were good, though, including a cinnamon sugar that emulsified itself to the top of the bagel.

Back at the hotel, Laura was wingeing that “Mike should really put on some trousers,” and had taken to working down in the lobby while waiting for Mike to figure out what trousers translated to in real English.

The afternoon session was the team sprint and women’s points race. The team sprint featured Laura leading off the first two laps (because no other women from MIT were brave enough to ride track and help her out, ahem ahem), followed by some quick laps from Nick and Zach before Mike ITT’d the final two laps to finish just a touch faster than our other DII competition. Laura then turned right around and rode a 20K points race, going out a couple times on flyers and chasing intelligently. The field stayed together for the most part, so that Laura’s finishing sprint paid off.

Day 3

More racing: the morning session featured the men’s team pursuit, where Nick and Zach basically held on for dear life behind the draft that is Mike Garrett. After attempting a set of rotations, Mike would start pulling away, then we’d regroup, and he would take another lap in the lead… so that the pursuit was actually a relaxed ITT for Mike with a couple additional wheelsuckers. Again, it was enough to gain some points on our DII competition, and was within just seconds of several other teams. (Third and eleventh place were separated by 4.55 seconds. That’s a tight distribution.) Jokes about Chewie’s infamous “JOSE! GAP! GAP!” remained rampant throughout the day.

Mike easily qualified for the points race by looking so much like a pro during the cycling clothing fashion show, and also by lapping the field during the prelims. During the real points race, he went out with just the right groups, and after spending something like a third of the race hanging out half a lap ahead of the field finally managed to lap them and get his points. Other groups attempting to lap the field, with or without Mike, weren’t as successful. (Side note: I was reminded that my Track Theme Song is still appropriate.)

Before all the dust settled, MIT had enough points to win the Div II Team Omnium. Fortunately for us, our small team had just enough space to crowd on to the winners podium nestled between large amounts of yellow from De Pauw and Army. There was more craft beverages back in downtown Indianapolis (a Ram Assface for both myself and Zach, which seemed appropriate after our team pursuit) and all of us getting compared to the intelligent folk from Butler University. “Am I right?”

Day M+1:M+2

From here on out, everything is pretty uneventful: the guys got dropped at the airport, the car started its journey back towards Massachusetts, etc, etc. There’s a great bike path between Stow and Cleveland, OH, that passes right through the Cayahoga Forest. I found out my sister doesn’t like zombie movies or fluorescently-colored shirts. I rediscovered a love for Twizzlers. And all the equipment arrived back safe with only a few nominal road bumps — ready for dishing track pain again next year.

MIT Cycling Takes Division Two National Collegiate Track Title

The MIT men’s cycling team composed of Jason A. Sears G, Anthony J. Schrauth G, and Michael L. Garrett G take off from the line at the Collegiate Track Nationals.The MIT Cycling Team captured the Division II team omnium at the National Collegiate Track Cycling Championships held last week in Colorado Springs. The MIT team of six riders — Jason A. Sears G, Michael L. Garrett G, Anthony J. Schrauth G, Yuri Matsumoto G, Katherine S. Lovejoy G, and Martha W. Buckley G — came from behind to edge out DePauw University 687-608 and capture the team omnium.

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Track National Champions

A strong team of Jason Sears (G), AJ Schrauth (G), Michael Garrett (G), Yuri Matsumoto (G), Katie Lovejoy (G) and Martha Buckley (G) traveled to Colorado Springs, Colorado to contest usacycling’s collegiate track national championships. After finishing second last year to the United States Military Academy, the MIT cycling team was determined and focused to take one step up the podium this year. After organizing the ECCC track season and spending many days at the New England Velodrome and on the road, the team was well prepared for this last step up.
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ECCC Track Season

The inaugural ECCC Track Season, organized our own Josh Schwartz, gets underway next weekend. The ECCC season will feature three race weekends, shortly followed by Collegiate Track Nationals in Coloroado Springs.

The season schedule is:

Aug 22-24 Kissena, NYC
Aug 30-31 Valley Preferred Cycling Center, Trexlertown, PA
Sep 06-07 New England Velodrome, Londonderry, NH
Sep 11-13 Collegiate Track Nationals @ Colorado Springs

The team has spent this summer preparing at the New England Velodrome in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Pictures from a coaching session several weeks ago have been posted.

Track Coaching this Weekend

This Saturday is the last coaching session before the ECCC starts next week, so let’s try to make attendance as good as possible! We’ll be concentrating on team stuff: figuring out starting orders for team sprints and team pursuits, talking about pacing and exchanges, etc.

If you’re planning on racing at ECCC or Nats, or even if you’re just interested in track in general, it’s highly recommended to come out. The team will be covering all expenses for the trip.

We’ll send two groups: one leaving at 8am to race in the morning and do coaching in the afternoon, and one leaving at 12:30 to come up just for coaching. Expect coaching to finish around 4-4:30 and to get home around 5-5:30. Please sign up using the logistics form.

The deadline is Friday, 6pm.