All posts by singsing

Joe Near’s photos and video from Yale

I’ve posted photos taken with my camera at both the Beanpot and Yale
(thanks to everyone that took photos!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jnear/sets/72157626213043928/

And helmet-cam footage from the Men B crit is here:

Yale Lux et Velocitas 2011 Crit, Men B from Joseph Near on Vimeo.

I’ll try to post video from the USAC 3/4 crit this week, and if I have
time, video from the B circuit (it’s a lot of video to work through!).

Joe

“Always wear a helmet”: Keith’s race report

Keith, our former MTB captain, had an interesting couple of weekends racing road, and has posted his thoughts to his blog.

Let’s digress a moment to understand my perspective on this road racing thing: I’m a guy who races with big spacing at average speeds of 14mph; on dirt, which is soft; dodging trees, which don’t move; on a bike that eats obstacles the size of baseballs for breakfast. Now take this same guy and put him on a bike that feels like a toy, speed him up to double the pace, replace dirt with concrete and add a couple dozen clean shaven 20-somethings as fit and aggressive as they are squirrely bike-handlers to swarm about while whipping around in circles until everyone is blind from oxygen-deprivation. They tiptoe on the brink of disaster where the minimum penalty for failure is ending up like a lemon skin after an evening in a french kitchen. This is pretty much the definition of scary.

I strongly suggest you read the whole thing.

“ATTACK NOW! DO YOU WANT TO WIN?” (Spencer’s report and Joe’s footage)

The Tufts men’s B crit was a great race for me—probably the most fun I’ve ever had in a crit.  It started with putting the skinsuit on—I had decided I meant business.  As Tim Humpton would say, “If you look like a pro, you’ll feel like a pro, and if you feel like a pro, you’ll ride like a pro”*.  The next thing was that we knew that race would string out quickly and people would get pulled, so we MIT men decided we would go hard from the whistle. Continue reading

Captain Katie Quinn’s report from the A/B Tufts crit

This is my first race report for the season and I’m writing it because I’ve looked forward to the Beanpot crit all season: I knew it’d be the first time that I’d get to race with all six MIT A/B women riders at once … and it didn’t disappoint!

I’d hate to get sentimental about it, but watching Martha, Yuri and Laura race last year is what made me want to train all year so that I could race with (and maybe race like) them! I’ve also enjoyed sharing the experience of improving over the last year with Christina and Shaena. So it was a great feeling to stand at the start line with the entire women’s a/b team for our home race! Continue reading

Shaena’s report from the Beanpot TTs

This is the first of many reports from the Boston Beanpot road weekend, in which MIT took an unprecedented victory…

TTT: The women’s B triple t had many very good moments before its overarching bad one. Andrea Love and I made up the team, since we had the “problem” of having too many women in A’s to form a complete B team (great problem to have!) We started out on the gently rolling course behind the Army 4-person team, not expecting to beat them because of their sheer numbers but figured we were guaranteed at least 4th place overall because there were only 4 B teams. Well, we passed Army pretty early on, and with Andrea giving me very nice rests by leading up the hills we made very good time for the first 9 miles of the 12-mile race. Actually, we passed quite a few of the A teams, and the other B teams were several _minutes_ behind us by the time Andrea crashed. It was her first race, and unfortunately turned out to be a terrible start to the season; she hit my rear wheel and went down, breaking her collarbone (clavicle) So sad 🙁 At least all of the other MIT teams did well, and hopefully she recovers quickly! Continue reading

Nobody else had a chance at RPI (race reports and video)

There’s so much good stuff to report from the weekend at RPI. First, the result: MIT won the weekend with 267. Franklin & Marshall came in second with 155, and Bucknell was third with 153. Penn State, the previous overall leader, was seventh, with 114.

Overall standings after RPI

There are so many race reports to post! [Apologies for the formatting issues, working on that.] Continue reading

Andrew’s race report from Philly

There have been some great examples of teamwork in the past week in European professional races, but I think what our men’s C team pulled off in Philly is even better.

Hi Everyone,

There has been a lot of very excited banter about the Philly weekend and I wanted to throw in a few comments. First, the weekend was a blast. Rutgers had been a fun race but Philly blew it out of the water. Within races the MIT riders worked amazingly well together and it was the first time I understood the power that teamwork can have in this sport. Outside of races it was fantastic to hang out with such a great crowd of people. Continue reading