All posts by Zach LaBry

Interviews, News, Rides, Road, Training

Collegiate and amateur racing in the New York Times

This isn’t really about MIT directly, but a recent post from the New York Times’s City Room blog deserves a shout-out. It’s called “For Would-Be Armstrongs, Some Bike Racing Tips,” and it’s all about the transition from riding to racing in the amateur and collegiate circuits.

It also features advice from the coach and riders from my own undergraduate alma mater, the Columbia University Cycling Team. ECCC pride!

Columbia is a squad that has had an enormous amount of success in the past few years and has turned itself into one of the largest and most successful organizations in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference. The Lions almost always place talented and skilled riders in every men’s and women’s category. So it’s well worth reading their advice in the Times post.

Rides

Jose’s new 80-mile loop

From the recently crowned Fitchburg cat 3 champion comes a new 80-mile ride to test your legs…and your navigational skillz.

Hi everyone,

I’ve just finalized “The Green Ride”. It’s a beautiful, shade covered, calm 80 mile loop on nice roads, with a fair amount of climbing. It leaves via the usual way to Dover, and comes back from Concord using a brand new route. You can think of this as “the new Pie Ride”. The only real caveat is the number of turns. It’s online now at http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2982237.

More goodies, including a PDF cue sheet and various topographic files, will be posted soon.

Alumni

Alumni spotlight: Sal Acosta

Sal Acosta ’84 recently bought two MIT Cycling jerseys: one for himself and one for his girlfriend Elizabeth Glick.

Sal and Elizabeth

He’s director of operations for ABB, a power technologies company, in Baldwinsville, NY. Luckily for him, central New York State is blessed with great riding terrain—his favorite rides are around Onondaga Lake, Oneida Lake, and the Finger Lakes.

In early August Sal and Elizabeth will be doing a 6-day, 400-mile ride in the Lake Champlain area. If you’re interested, you can download the info sheet here and join them on what is sure to be a spectacular week of riding. And Sal notes that you’ll be able to spot them in their team kit.

Mountain, Race Previews

Follow Eric and Keith at BC Bike Race

The word “epic” gets tossed around a lot these days. And it’s clear we should be careful when the word is used by event promoters (except X-Pot) or anybody hawking a product. But there is absolutely no question that the word “epic” applies to the BC Bike Race, in which riders haul themselves from Vancouver to Whistler over seven spectacular stages of singletrack. And two riders from MIT are about to embarrass the rest of the field.

Our very own strongmen Keith and Eric have been training for this for many moons. (But not at the expense of the latter’s thesis, of course, heavens no.) Anybody who’s tried to hold their draft in the last few months knows that they have tuned their engines to perfection.

In fact it’s possible you’ve already been following their build-up to the BC race. Since 2008 Keith and Eric have helpfully and exhaustively documented their training and thinking on the blog they jointly maintain as Team Pedal and Wrench. Only a blog by a pair of MIT students, and in fact only by this pair, could include both setting up wireless in Afghanistan and a 10-year statistical analysis of trends in MTB geometry.

The race starts on the 28th. Wish them luck, cheer them on, and follow their progress as Team Pedal and Wrench—on the race website, linked above, and on their blog, when they get a break from a week of unrelenting contact with nature.

News

MIT’s D2 omnium victory on Cyclingnews.com

From First Edition Cycling News, June 5, 2009 (thanks to Alex Chaleff, who isn’t even technically an MIT rider, for the tip):

With the 2008-2009 collegiate cycling season officially in the books, USA Cycling has announced that Lees McRae College (Banner Elk, North Carolina) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts) topped the rankings of Division I and Division II schools respectively.

…In Division II, the top two spots were a repeat of the 2007-2008 rankings with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology again beating out Western Washington University (Bellingham, Washington) for the title.At the midway point, it was Colorado College (Colorado Springs, Colorado) and the Colorado School of Mines (Golden, Colorado) tied for first place, both with 29 points, while MIT and Western Washington were tied for third with 26. MIT moved into the lead, however, after a strong third place performance in the omnium at cyclo-cross nationals. The final national championship of the season saw MIT finish second to Whitman University (Walla Walla, Washington) to score 19 points for a total of 63 while Western Washington came in third for 18 and a total of 60.

The collegiate rankings begin at the start of the academic year and points are awarded to the top 20 from the team omniums in the national championships for each of the four disciplines: track, mountain bike, cyclo-cross and road.

Alumni, News

Alumnus arrives in Cambridge from Cleveland for his 50th reunion

Oliver Seikel (class of 1959, course XXI) completed an 808 mile ride from his home in Cleveland to MIT, arriving in time for his 50th class reunion this weekend. His two traveling companions rode to 50th reunions at Harvard (from Buffalo to Cambridge) and Columbia (from Cleveland to New York). Oliver’s route traced the Lake Erie shoreline to Buffalo, paralleled the Erie Canal to Albany, and then crossed the Berkshires, more or less following SR 9 to Cambridge.

MIT

 

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