The 2007 Philly Phlyer - Bike race weekend #2, March 10th & 11th

Julia and I drove up to Philadelphia on Friday March 9th and met up with the 3 undegrad boys at the Best Western in the museum district around midnight and got to sleep pretty shortly thereafter. After grabbing a quick breakfast at Wawa, we drove over to Fairmount Park for the 2007 Philly Phlyer. Hosted by Drexel, UPenn, and Johns Hopkins, the Philly Phlyer is a cross-conference race with teams from both the Atlantic and Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conferences. With more than 500 racers competing, the weekend turned out to be the largest collegiate bike race ever.

I was signed up again this weekend to ride Men's C for Saturday's road race and Sunday's crit. The road race course diagrammed above was a loop approximately 6 miles that Men's C was riding 3 laps on. The first stretch on Lansdowne Dr was a steep downhill onto a sweeping 180 degree turn followed by a straight run along the river. The Strawberry Mansion Bridge loop features a solid climb after a sharp 180 degree turn off the river and a fast, winding descent into a 90 degree turn back onto the river. Black Rd is a moderate climb to the final sequence, which includes an off-camber, hard turn. The Men's C group was so large that it wound up being split into Division 1 and Division 2 races based on the size of the school. I got to see the Men's D, Men's Intro, Women's B, Women's Intro, and a couple USCF races go in the chilly morning before my race. It was about 1:00 p.m. and a lot more warm (maybe about 50 degrees) when we got to line up at the start. There were 71 of us that started the ride and everyone took off at a blazing pace. I was sticking to the back of the pack but keeping up ok until we got to the first hill after the 180 degree turn off the river. I just got ditched. After I eventually made it up and caught my breath, I was able to sprint for a couple minutes and catch back up to the pack only to be ditched again coming up the hill at the end of the first lap and did not catch back up during the race. Though I felt good throughout the ride, there are just no hills to train on in D.C. compared to where some of these guys are from. I wound up crossing the finish line of the 18 mile ride in 60th place out of 61 riders. Fortunately some other Georgetown riders had a much better showing than I did. After Saturday's races were complete, we all made our way back to the hotel and got cleaned up. Then we all walked out as a group and got strombolis for dinner, and I ran up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art like Rocky Balboa on the way back to the hotel. We all stayed up and watched Georgetown beat Pitt to win the Eastern Conference Championship that would get Georgetown a number 2 seed into the NCAA tournament.

The crit course on Sunday was approximately 0.7 miles long, perfectly flat, and very wide all around. It was designed as a fast course with four 90 degree right turns that is well suited for beginners but requires great pack riding skills and strong legs to excel at, especially with the strong headwinds on Sunday. The Men's C race would be riding for 30 minutes and completing 17 laps of the course, and there were 66 of us that lined up to start the Division 2 race around 1:00 p.m. on a much more pleasant Sunday afternoon. I was a little distraught after Saturday's ride and had some determination that day. It turns out that the crit is much more my style of race as I am able to sprint with those guys despite not being able ride hills with them. We sprinted the straight, slowed in the turn, and sprinted the straight over and over again. I started towards the back of the pack but found myself pushing up towards the front a couple of times. At around lap 8 there was a pretty nasty wreck where several bikers went down in front of me, and the 15 of us or so that got caught behind it and didn't go down were slowed dramatically getting going again. We spent the rest of the ride racing trying to catch up with the pack but never quite made it. I was recorded as finishing in 41st place out of the 50 finishers. Overall, Georgetown faired well on the weekend finishing in 27th place out of 57 teams in the points standing.

Somebody needs to tell me this is bike racing, not a GQ add.