Track Nationals - race report Tom Bolton

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Eleri
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Joined: 31 Dec 2009, 08:43
Location: Erskineville

Postby Eleri » 17 Feb 2015, 21:17

Tom Bolton raced Track Nationals in January and sent in this report.


After the State Championships in November and December, I was selected in the long squad for the NSW team to go to nationals. This allowed me to train with all of the other long squad members in preparation. Although I didn’t end up making the team to go down to Track Nationals in Melbourne, Brad Mcgee said that it would be a great learning experience for me to go anyway for next year. I flew down with the NSW team and stayed with them in an apartment for 6. It was a lot of fun. We were self catering which was a first for me at a cycling event. This was a great experience, even if the food wasn't always that good.

I decided to take part in the kilo, the scratch race, the kieran, the points race and the madison.

The first event was the one kilometre time trial or kilo. I warmed up with a very long and structured warm up, which was bit different from what I was used to. It involved starting 1.30 before the race with 15 minutes on the rollers. Then it was a rest, before I headed outside on my track bike to do some starts. After that there were two more quick blasts on the rollers with rests between. My time was 1:07:46 which was a new personal best by about 1.5 seconds and got me 6th place which i was happy with. Rowan Wight from SA won gold (about 1 hour after he recorded the fastest time in the IP with a 3:16) with a 1:03:5 and Cam Scott got silver with a 1:03:9.

The next event was the scratch race, qualifying in the morning with the final in the evening session. Top 12 qualified and I got through. The qualifier wasn’t too fast until a flat tyre with about 5 to go pushed the pace up and we were pretty much sprinting from there. The final was a lot faster. I felt good at the end, but miscounted the laps and sprinted too early. The average speed was 52.6km/h over 50 laps. I came 12th out of 24. I was pleased with how I felt at the end but a bit disappointed about stuffing up the sprint.

The next race on the morning of the next (third) day I only just qualified for the points race on one point (coming 12th with 12 qualifiers) and didn’t feel good. My legs just felt really tired. In the evening session that day I had the Kieran. I got 3rd in my heat with the top two going through to the final, so my next race was the 7-12 final. I got third in that one too. Then it was the points race final which I felt terrible in and pulled out after 40 laps having chosen a gear that was slightly too small (96). It was a a 100 lap race and the average speed was 51km/h. Brad McGee, the NSW coach said it was one of the toughest under 19 race he’d ever seen and that he’d underestimated the speed of it. It was one of the hardest races I’ve ever done.

On Saturday morning there was the madison. It was cool and raining outside on the day. The race was shortened to 80 laps because of a reduced field and the heaters being on to warm the track for the hour record to 27 degrees. I partnered up with Jacob Jones from North Sydney. It was our first madison together and we stuffed up the changes at a few key points so we dropped off the back and lost a lap over the remainder of the race - not the two laps we were recorded as having lost! Again it was fast and furious, average speed 52.5 km/h.

After that I went back to the hotel for a sleep -once the racing had finished and then came back to the velodrome for Jack Bobridge’s World Hour Record attempt. During the Nationals the velodrome had been quite full but it was packed for the evening session on Saturday with The Hour attempt. As competitors we had to sit in the pits area. We were siting at the bottom of the bank looking up at Steel von Hoff, Miles Scotson and Alex Edmondson who were in the stands just above. It was good to watch and a bit disappointing that he didn’t get the new record after all the effort.

Overall it was a great weekend with some fun racing to be a part of, and some really exciting racing to watch. The elite mens points and mens scratch were the two most exciting races to watch, especially as there was lots of excitement in the NSW camp. The NSW team ended up winning the team award.

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JoTheBuilder
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Joined: 19 Feb 2011, 15:32

Postby JoTheBuilder » 18 Feb 2015, 07:21

Well done Tom. Sounds tough! No doubt plenty of experience for the years ahead.

MarkL
Posts: 400
Joined: 31 Mar 2009, 11:14
Location: Leichhardt

Postby MarkL » 19 Feb 2015, 14:28

Fine efforts Tom!!
It's good you had the opportunity to race at that level and did it.


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