Riding the Individual Pursuit (IP) at Master Nats had been on the plan since the end of 2008, but IP / Elite Nats was thrown together only a month ago. Dick Evans RR was meant to be the bookend to my 2009 season, but hey, there's nothing like wedging in one last book! A quick email to my coach Terry Gyde and I had a new schedule of pursuit specific track workouts to do during September.

The track had an open training session for the 2hr before the racing start time of 4pm. I arrived there at 1:30pm so that I'd have plenty time to get in a few efforts on the boards before lining up.

While sitting in the center of the track, Floyd Landis walked in and sat down right across from me. Crazy... I've raced with pro's, but I've never been near a grand tour winner (yeah, I know that is debatable). We had some conversation about him coming over to Hawaii for the mountain bike stage race (which I found out has been cancelled for this year). He's definitely entertaining!

Just my luck, I was in the second of the pursuit qualification heats. There were about 20 riders signed up to race. A few guys were no-shows, and Andrew Kruse from my TP team was DQ'd, but not sure why. The first guy raced solo, but ended up crashing after getting out of the start gate, eventually pulling out, then 9 heats came after that. I was up against Johnny Rondash of Team Helen's and recognized the name from doing some Pro/1 races in SoCal, but couldn't remember how good he was at TT'ing.

Before today, I'd never started a race from an electronic start gate, so it was time to get it right on attempt #1. I wasn't expecting to have an amazing start, but definitely didn't want to eat the boards like the first guy.

After a series of beeps at 30sec, 15sec, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... (or something like that), I was off! Within a couple laps I could see that I was making up a little time on Rondash, so I just kept my head down and rode my own race. I had an idea of what schedule I wanted to ride, but didn't have anyone to call out my splits. It was down to relying purely on feel even though my SRM was right there between my arms. At least for me, I'm more focussed on my position on the track in relation to the black line vs. what watts / times I'm doing. It's crazy how close my laps times were... Two of my half lap splits were both 8.610sec, with eventualy avg. lap splits of 18sec. My idea target was 17sec laps, but if I'd pulled that off I'd have been in second place behind Taylor Phinney!

Somewhere around lap 10 of 16, I caught Rondash and lost some time. I wasn't sure if he was going to move up the track or if I was meant to go up the track to pass him. I chose to go around and put in some faster laps once I'd passed him to win my heat by a little over 20sec.

In the end, I was 7th place overall with 4:53.829 at an average speed of 49.008kph (30.5mph) at 112rpm and 400w. 5 seconds faster and I'd have been in 5th and in the medals.

Phinney qualified fastest with a 4:30.855 ahead of Roman Kilun's 4:41.340, Julian Kyer's 4:46.967, and Daniel Harm's 4:48.929 (2nd place behind Phinney in 2008). I did the first 3km in 3:39.534 which is about 5 sec faster than I went at Master Nats in Co. Springs back in August. 1km extra distance and at higher watts... Not totally the result that I wanted, but I'm somewhat content with it given that I don't have a track to train on in Hawaii.

Thanks to everyone that helped get me to Elite Nats - Shannon O'Shea (expert motorpacing), Nguyen Le / Momentum Multisports, Hawaiian Airlines, and my sponsors for the 2009 season... and Stu Press / LaGrange (my old team) for helping me out with a place to stay while in LA.