Dear MIT Cycling,
This is the last day before the rubber hits the fan and MIT begins their well-conceived Domination of Road Nats 2009. The kids have been out riding, gone on tactical previews of the road course (they won’t let me release any details, given that all our competition is, of course, reading this blog looking for secret insights*). There was the standard food shopping, dinner, Tim still talking about food, cookies from Ma Loomis, Tim planning his post-race meal, and last-minute bike prep. It sounds like we’re going to have to take a hacksaw to Chewie’s rig or else go Gattaca on Michael’s arms to make him super-UCI legal.
*Secret insight number 1 for competitors who have continued reading despite the warning: Martha is going to go fast, starting at Team Point H1. You’ll be able to see it from the streaming video while you’re sitting back in your hotel room crying because her initial blistering speed melted your tires and you had to go home early. (If you noted that I mixed tenses, it’s because I’m tired, too. Mario and I have learned that taking care of princesses can be tiring. I mean that in a mostly-nice sense.)
The race hotel, where we’re staying, has exploded in its bikiness. There’s people with truing stands visible through the open doors, other fixing brake pads in the hallways, bikes up and down the elevators all day long, and so much spandex that you’d think it was 1987 again. The hotel even supplied cleaning rags to every room as a free gift. There’s two small conventions at the hotel in addition to the Nats crowd, and it’s been entertaining to watch the other hotel guests try to navigate around piles of wheels in the hallways.
*Secret insight number 2: local beers have the appropriate level of oxygen to match the environment in which they were brewed, and thus have no negative effect on your pedal wrenching. Fat Tire is made in Fort Collins, thus making it the most appropriate and only acceptable beer to be seen handing out at the feed zone tomorrow. I’d take that feed if I were me… manning the feed zone.
Tomorrow: racing, hot feed zone action, Coach Nicole’s new haircut, and John Rhoden’s argument that lemon lime is the second greatest mis-nomer of Western civilization.
Monkeys and cogs,
Loomis