Mikezagorski.com

So…. I “retired” from racing after winning the IP at master track nationals in 2016 (followed by my worst TP ever the following day). The advice of my coach back then was:

1) “It is a tough decision to stop and when you go out on top you always think “I’ve got more rides like that in me” and you do… but you want to leave like you did from a podium. People remember you that way and that’s good. You have a few nice titles and an elite title to your name and that’s a lot to be proud of”.

2) DON’T GET FAT!

After 9 months of retirement I pinned on a race number with no real training and did the Hess TT (Merckx style). The race is on my doorstep so I figured why not. I did alright considering the lack of training. I bumped into Lucas Clarke pre race and we briefly talked about a possible team pursuit effort for master track worlds in LA.

Roll on a year or so and I watched master track worlds in LA via he online feed. Watching guys I know put in solid rides got me itching to race. I missed being part of the action and racing to win.

A couple months later I received a text from Andrew Kruse (we’ve done quite a few successful team pursuits together) asking if I had any interest in having a go at a TP for master worlds in 2018. I said I was loosely interested (pending marital negotiations) and worst case I’d be their man 4 for local training (their 4th guy was living in SoCal). Good excuse to hang out with some dudes and not get fat.

After a few TP training sessions in the springs I was feeling good and by mid-Feb had the green light. Including time at Disneyland post-racewas a solid bargaining chip :)

The following months were filled with regular TP sessions in Colorado Springs in winter (it’s so nice to have the dome over the track!), then later at Boulder Valley Velodrome in Erie. I even got cycling legend Gary Sutton (current USA Cycling national team coach) check us out and confirm that we looked average. As he’s used to seeing Olympians and World Champions we construed “average” to be a compliment :)

A work trip to Ohio in July turned into a quick hop over to Pennsylvania for master track nationals at T-Town where I got silver in the IP. I was a few seconds slower than I had projected based on rides prior to it, likely due to the silly travel just to get there. Getting second behind Chris Baker (Silver medalist in the IP at master worlds in 2017) by a few seconds wasn’t terrible even though I did want to win! I left there with the thought that maybe making a comeback was not the best idea… I’d finished with a gold and now I had reopened the racing account with a silver…

I kept plugging away with the TP work at BVV with the occasional 3K IP thrown in to gauge my form. I was consistently in the 3:40 ballpark but just couldn’t get any faster… I came close to beating my PB for any track in the US but wasn’t quite there. I had done a 3:39 there but had gone low 3:30’s at Manchester.

Trying to get 4 masters racers in the same place at the same time turned into a year long challenge of coordinating / juggling work, work travel, families, vacations, weather, and general life stuff. We all persevered with the planning and replanning through the use of Doodle, Facebook messenger, group text messages (if you want 20 text alerts before 6am I string,y suggest this method!), and a google spreadsheet!

We roped in Mac Cassin for the TP at the Elite Colorado State Championships and took the win, followed by TP and Kilo wins at master states. A couple weeks before Worlds I finally cracked my best time at BVV with a 3:36.7! Talk about perfect timing.

We had one final TP workout at BVV and did a flying 4K. The good news was that we did 4:11… The bad news was that we only did 15 laps. Still a sub 4:30 which per my numerous spreadsheets would have us in the 4:20’s in LA. Based on 3K TP Times from 2017 (the UCI changed the distance to 4K for 2018) it looked like it would be a close race between us and one of last years fastest teams.

Worlds started out with Lucas smashing the IP to take the win ahead of Chris Baker by about 4 sec in the final. I arrived in LA later, a few days before the TP. I didn’t touch my bike on the Monday, and decided last minute to skip trying to squeeze in a ride on Tuesday when I flew to LA. On Wednesday I got in my practice run with the team and we did a flying 3k with laps in the high 15’s and low 16’s. LA was definitely running faster than BVV and we all felt great.

On Thursday morning we had qualifying and were the second last team to ride. The first few teams were not that fast so we just had to beat their times to make sure we made it to the gold medal final. We rode to a new best time of 4:30.871 which was faster than third placed Argentina (4:40.096). Poland were 4th with 4:40.946. The Seattle team were 5th with 4:43.785 and Affinity 6th with 4:47.583. The team of Jason Meidhof, Kevin Phillips, Jonathan Cavner, and Jeromy Cottell rode a 4:33.836 putting them against us in the ride for gold.

Andrew Kruse rode the qualifier and we swapped him out with Ian Holt for the final. I stuck with being our starter in the gate. In the final we planned around a 4:25 schedule and executed it perfectly (4:25.112) to take a convincing win over a strong team from LA with one Colorado rider (4:29.314). The comeback was complete and totally worth it! To have my wife and kid there was the cherry on the cake.

The medal and jersey count that had to be hauled back to Colorado was both impressive and ridiculous. It was great to see so many riders’ hard work come to fruition.

Lucas’ cake made by Space-X’s chef Ted Cizma. It was DAMN good!

The icing on my own cycling cake!

Thanks to Jason Rico for being our mechanic throughout our team pursuit racing. That was money well spent to have less crap to worry about on race day. I made sure to keep Jason busy with UCI illegal aero bars (insert hacksaw sound) and a blown rear tubular while warming up.

Individual Pursuit
This is the event that I’d been training for since January… 3km of going as fast as you can from a standing start. Before Manchester, the best time I’d done was about 3:38. With the loss of speed going from altitude to sea level, but with benefits of living at altitude, I was thinking that a time of around 3:35 would be within reach. I was up against Juhani Tammisto from Finland in the qualifying and managed 3.35.158. A new PB which put me into the hot seat. It stayed that way until the final two heats which saw silly fast rides from 2014 silver medalist  Henrik Scharling and the 2014 bronze medalist Axel Boland. Nick English (GBR) qualified just over 1sec faster than me so it was Axel vs Henrik riding for Gold, and me vs. Nick in the hunt for Bronze. Later that night Henrik took a convincing win  over Axel and I missed Bronze by about 2sec behind Nick. I did what I could and put in my two fastest 3k rides ever, but just not quite fast enough to steal the bronze. The gold/silver medal times were in a whole different zip code so not much chance of getting anything shinier than bronze. At least I now know what I’m capable of doing and with some more tweaks to equipment and training, I reckon there are still time gains to be found.

Qualification Results
1st Henrik Scharling DEN 3.24.932
2nd Axel Boland NED 3.28.998
3rd Nicholas English GBR 3.34.069
4th Michael Zagorski USA 3.35.158
5th Emmanuel Vignard FRA 3.37.305
6th Jonathan Harris GBR 3.38.271
7th Julien Muselet FRA 3.38.277
8th Lewis Elliot USA 3.38.418
9th Juhani Tammisto FIN 3.41.623
10th Andrew Kruse USA 3.43.106
11th Justin Layne GBR 3.43.689
12th Alan Holmes GBR 3.48.831
13th David Percival GBR 4.30.437

Points Race
I did my research on most of the riders that raced the points race in 2014 so I would have an idea of what wheels would be the best to follow. On rider that hadn’t come up on my radar was Anthony Gibb. Had the start sheet said “Tony Gibb” then I’d have realized sooner that I was in for an ass kicking. Gibb was a track specialist back in the 90’s about the time I was making my move to live in the US. Not sure what his best result was, but he competed in some Sixes and had a silver medal from track worlds. I told myself to NOT contest any sprints or try and take a lap early in the race and managed to stick to that plan. I racked up points for 2nd in a couple sprints and a handful of points here and there, narrowly avoided eating shit when forced down the track onto the cote d’azure, chased some attacks, sat on some wheels… By lap 100 I was 1 or 2 laps down and not showing on the leaderboard and decided to call it a night with the thought that I might be riding a team pursuit 2 days later (That ended up not happening). I did what I could and rode a smarter race than normal, but was simply outgunned… Out of 14 starters only 6 or 7 finished, so that shows how brutal it was.

Last week I made a quick overnight trip to Utah so that I could roll the dice at the USA Cycling Master Road Nationals Time Trial – 34km/21 miles on an out and back course on Antelope Island near Ogden. With Master Track Worlds coming up in October I decided to skip the Road Race and Criterium (crash avoidance!).

The bike completed its journey from DIA to SLC sans any TSA inflicted damage. On Tuesday evening I got in an hour of on the trainer in the hotel and felt great, and followed that up with watching Mission Impossible 5 at a nearby cinema. Having a 3yr old and family living thousand of miles away, going to a cinema has become as rare as an Aurora Borealis sighting in Colorado! I was so excited that I rushed into the cinema, got my ticket, food, and sat down thinking I’d missed the first few minutes of the movie. 10mins later I realized that I had just watched the final 10mins! F**k. I got in some Skype time with the family then went back in to watch MI-5 from the START. The movie was great, as was having an electric reclining chair to slouch into. It was getting late so I bailed out as soon as it got to the point where I knew the ending. It kind of worked out!

Back at the hotel, there was a raging party; however, the music seemed to fade out around 10pm and I actually got in some decent sleep. The next morning I whipped up some oatmeal at 7am, lazed around, rior to leaving the hotel, busted out the 3M #77 and glued on my race number (Not the easiest task, but I got it done and it seemed solid), then drove over to Antelope Island.

I got in my warm up, and still felt pretty good and ready to put in a decent effort. A quick swig of fluids then I rode to the start line 1/4 mile away. Just as I arrived I reached back to feel my number starting to peel off my skinsuit. Fortunately, one of the official was nice enough to source some pins and secure my number. I would later discover that the pin job was not great and I had raced with a flappy number.

The race started off with a climb. Not huge, but it definitely felt like it dragged on for longer than I expected it to. What goes up, must go down, so there was fast decent (close to 50mph) to follow. I got passed by one rider about 3/4 of the way to the turnaround so either they were going to blow up, or I was now 30+sec behind fighting for the top podium spot (assuming said rider was going to win). I passed a couple guys before the turn and we had a bit of back and forth which was kind of irritating, but whatever. After the turn I could see last years 2nd place finisher Jamey Yanik already closing in on me. He started last, 2mins behind me, and seemed to be hauling along at a fast clip. It wasn’t much longer before he passed me. Not that much faster, but fast enough that the different in speed resulted in a substantial time gap by the time we both finished. Yanik destroyed the field and took the win by a large margin (adding to the short track MTB national title he won earlier in the year). Yanik went on to solo his way to the 35-39 road race title 2 days later so was clearly onto some excellent form.

I “ran what I brung”, but that was only good enough for 6th… Not exactly what I was hoping for. I’ve spent about 80% of my training either on the TT bike or track bike (same position) and had expected to go fast, but just didn’t have the watts to seal the deal this year. Comparing my time to other guys that I raced against in Colorado that also competed at nationals, instead of losing a minute to them, I’m now gaining a minute. At least that’s one positive to take away… I’ve improved steadily throughout the year.

Yanik moves to the 40-44 age group for 2016, but it looks like most of the other guys will still be in 35-39 for a few years to come. Depending on the location of master nationals next year, I may have another crack at a title.

Last Saturday, the final Colorado State Track Championship events for 2015 were held at the Boulder Valley Velodrome. The velodrome was PACKED… I ended up training in one of the tunnels under the track with a few others, which probably was a good thing as it was bloody hot! I raced in the 4k Individual Pursuit around noon which was a bit of an unknown as I’ve been training for the 3k distance. My heat had me up against Colby Pearce… Goal #1, don’t get caught! I decided to start off conservatively, but in hindsight I started WAY too conservatively as Colby said he almost caught me! I ramped things up from Lap 3 onwards and managed to regain some of the ~7 second deficit to finish in 4:52.30 and Colby rolled a damn fast 4:46.50. Kevin Nicol stormed around to finish in 4:45.29 to take the win ahead of Colby, Ian Holt took 3rd 2sec faster than me (4th) and Steven Herzfeld was 5th.

After the IP, the real endurance event started… The LONG, LONG, LOOOOOONG way for the Team Pursuit. We finally got to race that at about 430pm. There were two teams and we were second off which was nice as we got to watch the first team do their ride. Jeff Anderson, Jeff Wardell, Zach LaBry, and Ian Holt clocked 4:39.20. We (Kevin, Colby, me, and Steve Worley) has gone a bit faster two weeks earlier and I thought we would be shooting for about 4:35. Not a huge ask. We had the same team with the exception of Andrew Kruse vs. Steve Worley. and most of us have ridden a TP together so it was our race to lose. We had a steady start with no hiccups and were quickly doing laps in the mid 16’s. After one of my laps I heard 5-6 (which means 15.6sec) and that hurt me pretty good for the remaining laps. Andrew put in as much as he could before peeling off and letting me, Kevin, and Colby wrap things up. I was pretty fried and with 3 laps to go took a 1/2 lap pull vs. the 1 lap pulls we had been doing. A few more laps of low to mid 16’s and we crossed the line. Between trying to breathe and the noise inside of my aero helmet it was impossible to hear what time we had done. I eventually found out that we had one and done a 4:31.28, beating the other team comfortably. They didn’t have a Co State TP championship in 2014, and I won with some other guys in 2013, so that’s 2 out of 2! Later on Saturday night we realized that we’d beaten the US national record for the 30+ and 35+ team pursuit – records set by some seriously talented riders who have gone on to win master world championship titles etc., (but there’s a catch…):

Information from: http://www.usacycling.org/usa-cycling-national-records.htm

The catch is… No one realized we had broken the record(s) until we had already left the track… A requirement of breaking a record is that the bikes used need to meet UCI rules. Only one of our bikes was measured so no record. F***… I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was frustrated. It sucks knowing the ride we put in and that it isn’t officially recognized. No doubt we will take another crack at it when schedules work out… and maybe we’ll break the 4:30 barrier!

Thanks to Boulder Valley Velodrome moving their Saturday Time Trials to mornings from the previous evening schedule, I was finally able to get in a time 3k pursuit effort on the track. I had a stack of 1min intervals to get through on Friday, but reduced the number slightly so that I wasn’t feeling those on Saturday morning. Despite doing less, the legs were still not feeling so chipper 14hrs later. I planned to do 3x 3km efforts on different gears, but those plans changed when I asked Colby Pearce (2x Olympian) if he was game to do a 4k Team Pursuit effort. I figured it would be decent training (race speed for the duration, and race speed and power when I was taking my pulls). First, I did my 3k effort and rode 3:39.32 despite riding a more conservative evenly paced race. Not setting the world of fire, but good enough to chop ~15sec off the 18-39yr old track record. After a few more riders did their distances of choice, I lined up with Colby, Kevin Nicol, and Steve Worley for 4km of fun. Zero practice… Just run what ya brung! Kevin was riding a monster gear of ~104″ and was second man, and that didn’t work out so well at the start, but we got things together quickly and for the most part had a smooth ride. Part way through we lost Steve and were down to 3 men, which made for shorter changes. I underestimated that and was going too far up the track, and getting back on took some leg searing work. The last 2 laps were a bit horrible as I spent them trying to close down a bike length (or more) gap to Colby and Kevin as our finish time would be based of me as the third rider. Ugh. We ended up with a new track record of 4:39.13 which was ~6sec quicker than the previous one. We’re not done yet and plan a few more TP efforts so it will be interesting to see how fast we can go when we’ve got the kinks ironed out. I hadn’t done a TP since winning US Elite Nationals in 2013 and it was fun
 to finally do one again!