dj whitebread
Sunday, April 26, 2009
SCCCC Crit
Texas hosted conference this year, so I headed up to Pickle today to see my old teammates race. I got a few pictures from B Women's crit and the B Men's crit. I think it's a great course up there at Pickle; I'm glad they used it again this year. I wanted to put my favorite picture from the day up here:
Taking pictures of cyclists is tricky. They move to fast. This is one of those areas where having more expensive stuff would come in handy as you could take more shots more quickly. But even with my modest D40, I got a few cool shots out of it. :)
It was great to see everybody. It also made me miss collegiate racing. I have a hard time getting myself psyched up for USAC races. I know I've talked about this before. I just think collegiate racing is awesome, and I am very thankful for the few years I got to participate in it.
Labels: Conference Champions, UT Cycling
9:56 PM |
Friday, May 02, 2008
Alive
I am alive. Conference was a blast, even though I didn't necessarily do well. The rain during the crit really was horrifying; the infamous corner four became more infamous. But we brought the trophy back home with us to Austin. Two years in a row! Hook'em!
I'm working a lot, and will continue to do so until Thursday night. I'm hoping to squeeze in a some exercise here and there. I should probably swim once before the triathlon a week from tomorrow. Whoops.
I can still rock out to the latest Muse album.
I have been updating my Twitter feed decently frequently because it's fast and I don't feel the need to be as thorough in my commentary. Clicky.
Labels: Conference Champions, OSDI, twitter, Wichita Falls, work
11:04 PM |
Monday, April 30, 2007
East Texas Showdown
The UT Cycling team traveled to East Texas this weekend to do battle in the pines surrounding Nacogdoches and Lufkin. I got to drive one of the cargo vans. They take the seats out of a 15 passenger van and we put like 13 bikes in there. It works out well.
Saturday morning started out with the road race. Our race was really short (just 24 miles) and was one lap around their course. The tricky thing about the course (other than it was a tad hilly) was that there was a one mile section of very loose, sandy dirt. Downhill. With huge potholes. Your bike moved around like crazy in this soft stuff... not to mention you're blowing through it because it's downhill. I was by myself at this point, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Around mile 7 or so I decided to stop postponing the inevitable (me getting dropped) and do something. I was about 3 or 4 wheels back from the front and right as we crested a hill and came into a long flat/downhill I wound it up and came along the left side hearing people yell out, "Left Side!!" I got low and started pumping as hard as I could I had a little gap at first, and the next time I looked back I had 4 MSU guys on my tail with the whole pack right behind them. I kept going for a little while longer, but I had no delusion of keeping up my pace for too long. Figuring that there was no chance of getting away at this point, I slowed down and slipped back into the pack to let the MSUers taste the wind for a bit.
We had just been rotating through our team attacking up to this point, and MSU had decided they weren't going to let anything get away. But I knew our team has too much depth and eventually somebody was going to get away. Well, I'm now back in the pack, and I'm tired and we start climbing and I just can't turn the pedals around fast enough to hang on. I probably would have been able to hang around a lot longer had I not attacked... but I wanted to actually try to do something rather than just sitting there sucking wheel. I made MSU do some work, so I think I did my domestique job.
Turns out, our team kept attacking and it wasn't until the last mile or two was Tony finally able to get away, and then Will right after him. So we finished 1-2 with a few places in the top 10, so it went well. The other teams just figured they could chase us down all day, but we have too many strong riders on our team. Nobody else has the depth we do in the Cs. We did well in a lot of the other categories as well.
The team trial didn't exactly go as planned as my fourth team member showed up as they were about to let us go, so we only had 3 and the third guy blew up 3 miles into the 12 mile time trial, so it turned into a recovery ride and a mobile cheering station for our other teams that we saw on the course.
Sunday morning was the last collegiate road race of the season: a crit in the middle of historic downtown Lufkin. It was a great course, with many turns and a cool little s-curve chicane right before the finishing straight. We had the entire road (that had angled parking spots on both sides) so with the wide streets you could really hold a lot of speed through the turns.
I spent most of the race up near the front helping chase down attacks by other teams and making sure when our guys attacked I either helped a gap form or tried to get up there to keep our representation in any impending break at a good ratio. Nothing stuck though, and the speed just kept getting upped. A poorly timed decision on my part to fall back a little to get some rest came at the same time an attack happened, and I fell myself slipping further back than I wanted, and I just hung dangling off the main group for a while. I stayed there until like 3 or 4 laps to go when the accordion affect was just too much for me. I coasted back to the little back pack and just hung with them until the finish. All in all, my best crit performance ever as I was mixing it up for most of it. It was a good way to end the season.
The best part, however, was that we won the conference championships. We beat MSU, the only school in our conference where cycling is a varsity team that recruits all over the country and gives scholarships to cyclists. They had won for the past 5 years, and we broke the streak this year. The team worked really well together all season, and we made good things happen. I personally only contributed a little, but it really showed why collegiate cycling is a blast. It's all about the team... and having a strong team is necessary to actually get anywhere.
What was also cool was that when it was announced that we won we broke out champagne and pulled a protour style champagne spray down of everybody on the team, and then proceeded to pass around the big trophy full of bubbly around for everybody to drink. Good times.
So what I am going to do now? Well, the Thursday crits will continue until October, and there are some crits around in the next few months. AMLI will be a big deal this year with the domestic pro teams showing up, and that's in June. Also, I want to do some more tri's this summer, but that involves running, yuck. However, the swimming would be good to help get my upper body in a little better shape.
Oh yeah, and I have to get a bunch of work done... ;)
Labels: Conference Champions, UTCC
1:25 PM |
