All posts by bozturk

ECCC Championships – It’s good to be on top!

It was a great privilege to finish the road season at our home race near Warwick, MA. The race was an incredible success thanks to Dmitro, James, Dustin and Lucy, our race organizers! We also thank alumni, sponsors, current club and racing members, and members of other teams for lending a hand!

Now to the racing! There were some dominant performances across the board, and the MIT men deserve special mention for taking the wins in the B, C, and D road races, as well as the C criterium, for double points! Although several of our women suffered a crash during the TTT that prevented them from racing, Emma held down the fort, taking 3rd in the road race and 2nd in the criterium.

MIT took the ECCC omnium win and was 3rd in points at the ECCC Championship. We are looking forward to sending four women to represent us at Nationals at Grand Junction, CO this year.

Here’s Sarah’s account of the weekend:

This last weekend was the ECCC Championships, hosted by the one and only MIT team (us!). As opposed to every other weekend of the ECCC season, the weather was perfect – both days featured blue skies, sun, and warm temperatures. On top of that, our coordinators-extraordinaires (the team of Dmitro, James, Dustin, and Lucy) coordinated an incredibly smooth and fun weekend for all of the racers and spectators. One of the really special things was the number of teammates who turned out for this event – both racing and volunteering. I loved both getting to see teammates I hadn’t seen for a while (woo Amanda Chen!) and meet some others for the first time (hi, Andrew Xia!).

The weekend started off on Saturday with the team time trial. The course featured one incredibly terrifying pot-holey section near the beginning, but after that rolled through the central MA countryside taking advantage of the beautiful farmland and fun hills. Having crashed during the crit the previous weekend, I was pretty nervous to be racing again, but my TTT teammates were calming, supportive, and positive. We made it through the pot-holed section without any issues, and were really getting into our groove, before ending prematurely when two of us went down in a crash. Although it was crazy and stressful in the moment, both Tori and Amy got great care at the local hospital and were able to come back and cheer for the team that afternoon! [Berk chiming in! Our Men’s B, C, D TTT teams took the top podium spots, but the mood was somewhat deflated due to the crash. We were extremely happy to hear positive news about our ladies as we prepared for the afternoon!]

Saturday late morning and afternoon was the road race – a crazy loop including two challenges climbs (one of them dirt!). Miles Couchman started off the day with a dominant win in the Men’s D field, and Liam Fenlon followed his lead, snagging a win in the Men’s C category as well! The A and B fields raced in the afternoon, and Berk Ozturk was able to complete the trifecta by winning the Men’s B field for the team. Emma Edwards represented the women’s team all by herself, and had a strong second place finish in the women’s A field.

That evening, all of the teams met at a local YMCA to share some delicious Italian food and cookies, and celebrate the season and races of the day! Although the venue had been arranged somewhat (very) last minute, it was perfect for the occasion – homey and light-filled (especially appreciated after a long dark winter). All in all, it was really wonderful to come together as a team and as a larger ECCC family to appreciate the adventure that this road season has been.

Sunday featured a criterium through downtown Turner Falls, and my day began bright and early with course set-up duty with Quinn and Berk. Despite the massive performances that they had put out the previous day, both of them were cheery and positive as we lugged hay bales around the streets (and then swept up after ourselves!). Although there was still one car left on the course when the races began at 8 AM, everything went smoothly! The course featured a super steep uphill section following by a gentle (but lengthy) downhill ending in a sharp corner – but all of the riders managed it safely throughout the day.

The day was capped off by an awards ceremony, in which our team took home the “ECCC Omnium” prize for most points throughout the season (woot!) and a third place award for the ECCC Championships itself. More importantly, the men’s and women’s teams exchanged small but thoughtful (and delicious!) gifts including flowers and cake!

All in all, the ECCC Championships was an awesome time to come together as a team, to support our race organizers and to race as hard as we could. I, for one, am already looking forward to next season!

 

Here is Berk’s account of the Men’s B road race:

After a great performance in the TTT in the morning; Dustin, Quinn and I were ready for the biggest climbs of the season. I was particularly spooked by the dirt climb which was the longest and the steepest on the course.

We knew from the beginning that this climb would shatter the field, and it did. Quinn and I managed to make the 8-man lead group as it separated towards the end of the first 16-mile lap, and we had a solid gap by the middle of the second lap. The group was strong, and we managed to stay together for the majority of the second lap. We were busy inflicting pain on each other up the dirt climb for a second time when I decided it was going to be my move. The gradient eased, I got around to the front, and started accelerating. Suddenly, I heard commotion behind me, and realized that at least 5 of the riders were on the ground, including Quinn, and although I was conflicted I decided to commit.

A WPI rider was the lone chaser, and he was breathing down my back, with at most 5 seconds of gap at the top of the climb. I decided that I wanted to go solo, and burned a lot of matches to make him lose sight of me. Thankfully this gambit paid off. I settled into a TT pace, hitting the climbs hard, and easing on the flats to try and keep the distance. The best part of the day was having Liam occasionally shout encouragements in his intense gravely voice from the lead car when he would lag back to tell me the gap, which came down to almost 15 seconds at some point!

I should have know that Quinn was the unsung hero of the day, because while I was alone TT’ing for the last 20 miles, he was busy staying in the chase pack of 6 riders, demotivating them by telling them that ‘they would never catch me’. The icing on the cake was that he joined me on the podium in 3rd! It was amazing to podium at Easterns, our home race!

 

Here’s Dmitro’s account of the Men’s D Criterium:

Averaging 5-6 hours of sleep for a week, no warm-up to speak of, and a fueling plan that consisted of some coffee and half a muffin hastily eaten on the drive down is not the most ideal crit prep – yet there I was, lined up and 30 seconds from the gun (whistle). Since it was our home race MIT riders got a call up. We had a whopping 6 riders in the field and basically took up the entire front row. At this point Miles leaned over and asked what my plan was for the race. Oh yeah, a race plan, I should probably have one of those. I hadn’t really thought about this at all, and went to my standard answer “rubber side down, and surviving, that’s all I’m shooting for”. Secretly I was thinking that I’d be lucky if it I managed to not get pulled, I was hoping that Miles would get into an early break (he’s been killing it this season), that way I could sit in the pack, hang on for dear life, and claim that I had done “hard work” blocking for him.

The whistle blew, and we were off. I’ve been racing a lot of CX this year and it has bled into my road riding, so I took off from the line, about 5 seconds in I looked back and saw that my fellow CX rider Tobi and I had maybe 15 meters on the rest of the field. I turned to him and said “wanna go for it” and boy did he!  While I drifted back to the pack he shot forward and was off, he stayed away, alone and in the wind for 18 mins while Miles and I stayed near the front of the pack, blocking where we could, and shutting down attacks. During this time Tobi also managed to pick up both primes, winning the quart of maple flavored yogurt donated by our friends at Sidehill Farms.

With 8 laps left the pack eventually decided to organize and proceeded to catch Tobi. As we came around and saw 7 to go the pack caught Tobi, and we were all together again. As soon as Tobi was swallowed up by the group I attacked. I was away, I was alone, and I was flying – after one lap I had built a sizable gap — adrenaline is one hell of a drug. The issue is, I was running on adrenaline and nothing else. I came around the finish line, this time seeing 5 to go on the board, and entirely unsustainable numbers on my Garmin, and was mentally broken – I couldn’t keep up this pace, I had tried the solo break game early this season only to get caught meters from the line, this was it, I was done. Somewhere during this crisis of confidence I realized I had a rider on my wheel, a racer from BU had bridged up to me. With someone to work with my despair was, if not eliminate, at least mitigated. I worked with the BU rider and over the next few laps we managed to grow the gap on the pack even more.

As we came onto the finishing straight in the final lap I was positioned perfectly, glued to the BU riders wheel and ready to launch my sprint. When we hit the 200 m to go mark my mind screamed “SPRINT”, unfortunately every single muscle in my legs scream “NO” just as loudly, and consequently I could only manage the most halfhearted of sprints – finishing a few bike lengths behind the BU rider. Still I was thrilled, I had managed to podium my own race. The rest of the day went great, and everything ran smoothly from a promoting standpoint (primarily due to the awesome planning done by Dustin and the great work of James).

L’Enfer Du Nord, The Day of the Breakaway


After the Shippensburg race weekend got cancelled due to inclement weather, the second day of the Hell of the North was cancelled as well. But regardless, MIT cyclists were eager to attack the ITT and criterium of April 14th, and had dominant performances in both events.

Liam demonstrating proper sprint technique in his criterium win!
Liam demonstrating proper sprint technique in his criterium win!

Read Dustin’s account of the weekend and Men’s B Crit below:

Going into this weekend, I was pretty apprehensive about what it might bring. The forecast continued to look grimmer as the weekend drew closer and by Friday, the weather gods were calling for temperatures in the mid-thirties and some mixed precipitation. Sweet. Awesome. Great for cornering hard in a crit with a new bike.

The ITT in the morning went well with MIT sweeping many of the top spots in all categories and pulling in a huge number of Omnium points. Go Tech! And as we transitioned over to Dartmouth’s Frat Row to get ready for the crit, things dried up and it actually began to look like we could have some good conditions for racing. We had a blast watching the early races with Coach Nicole providing commentary on strategy and suggestions on critical points in the course. She turned to me, Berk, and Quinn (aka the Killa Beeeees aka MIT Men’s B riders) and asked, “So what’s your strategy? Do you guys know what you’re going to do?” I replied, “Yeah we have a detailed agenda. Many planning. Much strategy.” We of course hadn’t discussed anything.

The race kicked with a fast few laps and then things settled in until the bell rang for the first prime lap. Berk attacked like a bat out of hell and 4 riders chased. As soon I saw them hit the finish line, I sprinted out of the group to draw up next to the 5 riders yelling “Let’s go, let’s go we have a gap, time to work!” in classic Liam fashion. Everyone gave me a quick glance and sat up, ready to head back to the pack. Except, of course, Berk who is always down for getting #rekt.

Now, Coach Nicole might say it’s stupid to attack 10 minutes into a 50-minute race in a two-man break with a teammate since the pack would almost certainly work hard to shut it down. But when in bike racing, YOLO as bike racers do (or maybe YGDS as some might say). So anyway, lap after lap we steadily grew the gap 2 seconds here, 5 seconds there. Until finally with 2 laps to go we turned the corner and there was the pack. We had lapped the field and, we were absolutely thrilled to find, the Quinn Bee was sitting at the front – totally wiped after a long day of blocking and shutting down attacks.

As it turned out, we had executed team strategy perfectly, with Berk and I working together very well at the front and Quinn doing everything he could to keep the rest of the race from catching us. I’d never had the opportunity to cruise casually across a crit finish line shoulder to shoulder with a great teammate and I don’t expect it’ll happen again soon- it’s definitely something I’d recommend giving a try if you ever have a chance. Sometimes you just need to decide to go for it in a race and once in a blue moon it works out exactly the way you’d hoped.

Read Tori’s account of the Women’s A/B crit below:

Repping MIT in the break!
Repping MIT in the break!

This weekend marked the first time this season that we had 3 women in the A/B race, since Amy just upgraded to the B’s! With no Sunday races, we stepped up to the crit ready to empty the tank with whatever we had left. In our race, and early attack split the field and resulted in a break of 5 riders, including myself and Emma. We rode a majority of the race with just the 5 of us. Despite getting caught near the end, an RPI rider attacked again and we re-formed the break with a substantial gap. Getting into the break (twice!) and riding there for most of the race had taken quite a bit out of my legs, and so I used what I had left to lead out Emma into and out of the final corner, and get her in position for the sprint. Her bike skipped a gear near the very end of the sprint, and she took a close second to the RPI rider. I rode in for 3rd in the Women’s A category and 5th overall. Coach Nicole was there, and provided great strategy and insights (and much-needed hot water) all day. The team had an incredible showing today, and I’m really excited to see what we can do in the final weekend of the conference season!

NYC Metro Showdown – an Army of Two

This year, the team sent only two racers to the NYC Metro Showdown hosted by NYU, Columbia, Rutgers, and Army on 3/31-4/1. Sadly, the much anticipated West Point races had been cancelled, and the ECCC decided to bring back this race which had been held two years ago, in order to fill the open weekend. Our riders Wade and Tori held down the fort and raked in some valuable omnium points.
Read Tori’s post about the weekend below:

Wade and I made the drive to Valley Cottage, NY for the circuit race, which featured numerous laps of a 3.7-mile course. The course had a slight climb, but it was quite short and so we were both prepared for a sprint finish. Given that there had been a significant number of crashes here two years ago, we carefully scouted out the course Friday evening to identify where we wanted to be positioned at various points on the course.

Wade was executing our game plan and riding a good race in the Men’s C field until an unfortunate mechanical which ended his race after a few laps. The Women’s A race played out more or less how I had expected. There were several attacks on the hilly section, but the pack largely stayed together. After 9 laps, the race indeed came down to a sprint. I was well positioned and was able to grab the wheel of the strongest sprinter in the field, which ended up being a perfect lead out, and I sprinted for 3rd place.

The next day featured a crit which was hosted by Rutgers on their campus. The course had 3 corners and one long, sweeping turn. Wade was ready to go for the crit, especially since his race had been cut short the day before. A lot of attacks and surging made for a challenging race. The rider off the front had been reeled back in before the finish and the race came down to a field sprint. Wade finished in the top 15, and also snagged 2nd in two primes to bring in some solid points for the team. In my race, there was an early solo breakaway that was ultimately able to stay away for the win in a very impressive performance.

In an effort to earn some points towards keeping the green jersey, I went for primes, taking 2nd in 3 of them, and 3rd in the other. The rest of the race came down to a group sprint for second. I started my sprint a little too late, but got across the line 2nd of that group to take another 3rd. Despite some nervousness on our part about the courses, the weekend went quite smoothly with minimal crashes across all fields. It was definitely out of the ordinary having only two people at a race weekend, but it was a success nonetheless!

Mansfield Madness – track racing without track racing



The second road race weekend featured some dominant performances from our women in the A field. Emma not only won the road race, she also placed 2nd in the Women’s A criterium, with Tori picking off primes to get a huge lead in the points competition. In the men’s D criterium, we saw a great display of teamwork where our riders launched attacks throughout the race. The kept this up until Dmitro attacked for a 2nd time, and stayed away until just before the finish line on the last lap. Miles, Andre, and Dmitro ultimately nailed 3 of 5 top spots in the race.

Berk, Quinn, and Dustin, i.e. the “Killa B’s” also employed some effective team tactics, which involved a heroic effort from Dustin to initiate the winning 3-man breakaway, and stay away from the field to ultimately take 2nd. In a true ECCC fashion, it was yet another cold weekend, which featured some snow flurries on Sunday, but everyone raced hard nonetheless. It was great to see some of the strategy we’d learned from Nicole get implemented (and work!) in races.

Read Miles’ recap of the weekend below:

The UConn race weekend was my first time racing, so my main goal was to stay upright and get a sense of how strong everyone else was. It was pretty chilly on Saturday morning and I made full use of Quinn’s luxurious heated seats on the drive to the TTT. There were two Men’s D teams: myself, Dmitro and Tobi on one and Felix, Biswaroop and André on the other. I was expecting the TTT to be an unpleasant suffer-fest, but I had an absolute blast! There’s not much that can beat riding fast outside with your teammates after being holed up inside on the trainer all winter. Our Men’s D teams ended up coming in 1st and 2nd place, even beating the times of the two Men’s C teams, and the Women’s A and Men’s B teams also got 1st, making for a great start to the weekend.

Next was the road race, which was a 21 mile, two lap course for the Men’s D field. Our race had 60 riders, so I decided to try and stay with the front ten riders and see what happened. I’m glad I was near the front, as there were two crashes in the first lap that I was totally oblivious to. The pace during the first lap was tame, and I could sense a lot of the others growing impatient, but I was happy to save my energy and just cruise along. The second lap was where things got interesting. About 4 miles from the finish, there was a crash going up a hill (go figure…) which Dmitro and Biswaroop unfortunately got caught up in but Felix and I narrowly avoided. Someone yelled, “There’s been a crash, this our chance!” and suddenly there was complete mayhem with everyone trying to break away. Felix and I managed to pair up and we worked together to try and slowly pick off the approximately 10 riders in front of us. The end of the course featured two short hills before a downhill finish. Felix was a champion and put in a huge effort to pull me up the first hill allowing me to hurtle down the other side and catch a few more riders. By that point, there were only three people ahead of me, but I was suffering and to my dismay, there was still one more hill. I convinced myself that I was being a total wimp since this hill was nothing compared to Mount Palomar (which we had ridden up twice during winter training camp), and I went all out up the final hill and managed to pass two of the remaining three riders. I was gaining on the final rider, who turned out to be from my hometown of Toronto, but didn’t have quite enough time to catch him. Kudos to him for staying away from everybody! I came 2nd (all thanks to Felix!), Felix 5th, Tobi 12th, André 13th and Dmitro even managed to finish mid-pack despite crashing.

The criterium on Sunday was held at the Stafford Springs Motor Speedway meaning that there were no sharp corners like in a more conventional crit course. While most people were disappointed about the lack of technical corners on the course, I was secretly happy to have an easy course for my first crit. Dmitro attacked in the second lap which caused everyone at the front to panic. The pack caught him within a lap or two but he had definitely tired a bunch of people out, allowing André to win both prime laps. Then, with about fifteen minutes to go, Dmitro attacked again off the front.

This time, with a superhuman effort, he managed to stay away and the rest of the MIT riders got to practice some blocking, to the frustration of the other teams. Remarkably, the pack only caught him in the final turn of the last lap. Coming into this last corner, I was sitting in a good position, about three wheels back from the leader, but of course, had completely forgotten all of the useful tips that Coach Nicole had taught us during the sprinting clinic. I started my sprint too late, after someone else had already sprinted past me, but I managed to hang on for a second place finish, with André coming 3rd and Dmitro coming 5th. I had a fantastic first race weekend thanks to the support and encouragement of all of my teammates! I learned a lot and hope to put it to good use in the coming races.

Finally, here is a playlist of footage from the Men’s D races:

Keep pedaling!

The Extremely Cold Cycling Conference (ECCC) and the Philly Phlyer


After a seemingly never-ending winter, MIT Cycling was well prepared for the frigid opening race in Philadelphia. We fielded 9 members with 3 of them being newly minted MIT racers. Although the conditions were adversarial, MIT Cycling had plenty to be happy about, with some strong performances all around, and even a smashing 1-2 victory by Jack and Biswaroop in their first collegiate race weekend.

Here is a recap of the weekend from Amy:

The first race weekend of the Extremely Cold Cycling Conference (the better-known name for the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference) began as expected – my Garmin reported that it was 25 degrees as we warmed up for the first event, the Team Time Trial. This was my first TTT with the women’s A team, so I was a bit nervous, but my nerves diminished somewhat once we discovered that we were racing unopposed. Despite being unopposed, we did not take it easy, and I quickly confirmed just how much stronger Emma and Tori are than I am! After taking a couple of turns pulling in the usual rotation, I was tiring at an unsustainable rate (and the cold air in my lungs didn’t make things any easier). So, I transitioned to “sitting in”, yelling “in” every time that Tori or Emma pulled off the front so that they would pull in front of me, and I could sit on the back and avoid the considerable extra effort of pulling. The TTT course runs along the Schuylkill river and is very flat, with only a small downhill at the beginning and uphill at the end, so there were few distractions, and I began to appreciate just how hard a TTT can be. Nonetheless, we did finally make it to that small uphill at the end, sprinted for the finish line, and, took first place! And also last place.

Our next race was the Circuit Race, which also ran along the Schuylkill river, but included an additional small hill. Turnout in my field (women’s C) was… underwhelming… to say the least. We began the race with 7 riders, but by the time we descended the small hill after 15 minutes, only 3 of us remained in the front “pack”. So, we spent the next hour TTT-ing around the course as I tried to figure out how I could beat the other two women. Because the course doubled back on itself, we could also see the other fields that were racing concurrently, so I watched Emma and Tori ride by several times. Unfortunately, my scheming was largely unfruitful. I decided to try to escape the other women on the final hill, but apparently they had the same plan! We all accelerated up the hill and around the final loop together, turned into the headwind on the finishing stretch and sprinted. Alas my legs had had just about enough at this point, and I watched sadly as the other two accelerated away from me across the finish line to take 1st and 2nd. I guess I’ll need to practice my sprinting more!

Among the other MIT racers, Tori was notable as having neither started nor finished her circuit race officially. The races had been running behind schedule but suddenly began running on time again without warning, so she raced to the start line and chased up to the group as they rounded the first corner; apparently in all of the rush the officials didn’t successfully record her as starting the race. Unfortunately she got a flat tire and so was unable to finish the race either. In his first road race, Cosmo crashed in the first corner, significantly damaging his wheel, but thankfully not himself. Other riders fared better – Emma took 4th in women’s A, and Berk took 7th in men’s B.

The criterium on Sunday was a traditional 4-corner crit around city blocks at Temple University. However, the course was made more interesting by the fact that it narrowed to a single lane for a block due to construction. This meant that riders were unable to ride three or four abreast as they would normally in a crit, and instead all of the races strung out into long single file or two-by-two lines. Of course, this was extremely important in women’s C, which had dwindled to only six riders. After riding most of the race with the same two women as on Saturday, I lost the final sprint to take second. In the men’s E race, Jack and Biswaroop raced off the front from very early on, to take 1st and 2nd by a considerable margin. In women’s A, Tori and Emma took 3rd and 4th, and Tori racked up tons of sprint points to claim the green jersey. Overall the day turned out to be much warmer and more pleasant than Saturday, and we were even briefly serenaded by a marching band whose path, unluckily for them yet amusingly for us, ran perpendicular to the crit course! As we packed into the cars and began our 6-hour drive back to Cambridge, I was already looking forward to UConn the following weekend, and hoping that more than five other C women were too!

As a team, we are looking forward to build on our successes as the top team in the ECCC in the omnium.