On Sunday March 18th I drove up to the University of Maryland in College Park to ride in the President's Crit. It was a chilly morning somewhere in the 40's as I pulled up around 7:45 a.m. in order to check in and get warmed up before the 9:00 start. This was a lot smaller race than Philly the weekend before as there were 28 of us that lined up to race Men's C. We would be racing for 25 minutes and completing 12 laps on the 0.70 mile course featuring three 90 degree turns, a small climb up to a tight technical chicane around the President's house, and a wide open finish. I started off pretty timidly toward the back of the pack for the first lap getting the feel of the group and the course. At the top of the hill on the 2nd loop there was a wreck in the middle of the pack that a few riders went down in that slowed me down quite a bit and totally spread out the group of riders. After I got by the downed bikers I put my head down and started chugging to catch up with whoever was in front of me. I passed a number of riders but never really found a pack ahead of me and really had no idea where I stood as the laps passed by. I was climbing up the hill behind an American University rider who just turned to the right, puked, and then kept on riding. Hardcore. On my last lap I saw a Maryland rider down over the curb in one of the turns who looked like he was in pretty bad shape. In the end I wound up crossing the finish line in 4th place out of 20 finishers and got our team 15 points. Everyone else did awesome and Georgetown took far more points than any other team at the race. After this 3rd weekend of racing, the Georgetown cycling team is in 1st place in Division 2 of the ACCC ahead (but not by much) of W&M, Appalachian State, and Johns Hopkins. Woohoo!
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The President's Crit at University of Maryland - Bike race weekend #3, March 18th
On Sunday March 18th I drove up to the University of Maryland in College Park to ride in the President's Crit. It was a chilly morning somewhere in the 40's as I pulled up around 7:45 a.m. in order to check in and get warmed up before the 9:00 start. This was a lot smaller race than Philly the weekend before as there were 28 of us that lined up to race Men's C. We would be racing for 25 minutes and completing 12 laps on the 0.70 mile course featuring three 90 degree turns, a small climb up to a tight technical chicane around the President's house, and a wide open finish. I started off pretty timidly toward the back of the pack for the first lap getting the feel of the group and the course. At the top of the hill on the 2nd loop there was a wreck in the middle of the pack that a few riders went down in that slowed me down quite a bit and totally spread out the group of riders. After I got by the downed bikers I put my head down and started chugging to catch up with whoever was in front of me. I passed a number of riders but never really found a pack ahead of me and really had no idea where I stood as the laps passed by. I was climbing up the hill behind an American University rider who just turned to the right, puked, and then kept on riding. Hardcore. On my last lap I saw a Maryland rider down over the curb in one of the turns who looked like he was in pretty bad shape. In the end I wound up crossing the finish line in 4th place out of 20 finishers and got our team 15 points. Everyone else did awesome and Georgetown took far more points than any other team at the race. After this 3rd weekend of racing, the Georgetown cycling team is in 1st place in Division 2 of the ACCC ahead (but not by much) of W&M, Appalachian State, and Johns Hopkins. Woohoo!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment