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.