Category Archives: Photos

Alumni, Mountain, Nationals, News, Photos, Road, Track, Training

End of Summer Club Newsletter

Hello Friends of MIT Cycling!

With another academic year completed, MIT Cycling members have been out riding in force and the officer duties have passed into the hands of a new set of students. I’d like to introduce you to our newest student officers.  I’ll be taking over as Alumni Officer and I’ll do my best to keep you as up to date as Laura did!

This summer, MIT Cycling members have been extremely active in local, regional, and national communities:

You may remember from Laura’s last newsletter that in May, the Road team successfully defended their Collegiate Road National Championship title in Ogden, UT.

Later in May, we hosted an Urban Cycling Clinic spearheaded by David Koppstein (G) with our road coach Nicole Freedman, teaching the MIT community about urban cycling safety and skills.

In June, we taught the Boston community at thing or two about aerodynamics (we hope our collegiate conference competitors missed this issue of Boston Magazine!)

A large group of MIT riders headed down to the Trexlertown Valley Preferred velodrome for a Try-the-Track weekend, led by our new Track Captain Kate Wymbs (’14). [Photo 1- Track]

At the end of June, Cameron Cogburn (G) won the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic, an epic and prestigious stage race in Oregon. You can read about his awesome victory here.

Over the July 4th weekend, we took a team trip up to Kingdom Trails in VT as part of an Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) mountain biking weekend. [Photo 2 -MTB]

We had a great time camping, “shredding the gnar” on the awesome singletrack, and even deep frying some Pop Tarts in bacon grease (the ultimate recovery food?!)  [Photo 3 – BaconTarts]

Many Club members took advantage of the mountain bike rental program provided by the MIT Outing Club (MITOC) and sponsored by the MIT Cycling Club.

Mid-July, MIT alum John DeTore hosted a viewing party of Stage 18 of the Tour de France—the epic double-summiting of Alpe d’Huez. (We sat and ate chips while commentating, “Oh we could totally do that…”)

On July 28th, TWO DOZEN club members dared the Climb to the Clouds, an epic local century ride that includes a summit of Mt. Wachusett! [Photo 4 – Clouds]

After a successful mountain biking weekend in VT, several Club members took on some ENDURANCE MOUNTAIN BIKE races!

  • Ben Eck (’15) and Luke Plummer (’14) raced a 2-man team at the 12 Hours of Millstone mountain bike race in Millstone, VT, finishing in 6th place! (Luke even rode an “extra large” 36”-wheel rigid bike!) [Photo 5 – Millstone
  • Yours truly Chris Birch (G) and Andrew Lysaght (G) headed to the State College, PA, area for the National Ultra Endurance series race Wilderness 101—a century MTB race consisting of 30 minute gravel climbs and 8 minute fall-line descents!

What’s next for the collegiate team?

Mountain bike season is about to begin, followed closely by the collegiate track! The conference calendar is here, showing upcoming races.

From those of us here in Cambridge and our club members abroad for the summer, we hope you’re enjoying some good riding wherever this update finds you.

See you on the road/dirt/track!
–Chris

Want to be included in the Friends of MIT Cycling newsletter?
Send an email update (photos encouraged!) to alumni officer Chris Birch at birch@mit.edu.
Looking for a way to support the MIT Cycling Club?

Help fund our cycling outreach, riding, and racing goals by making a donation today. Go to this page to submit a donation of any size. Your donations are tax deductible and go directly toward sustaining our student-run club. Thank you!

Photos, Race Reports, Road

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

Photos, Race Reports, Road

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 →

Photos, Race Reports, Road

Joe’s race report from Philly—with VIDEO!

First, the helmet cam footage:

Philly Phlyer 2011 Men C2 from Joseph Near on Vimeo.

Here’s what ECCC director Joe Kopena had to say about it:

If you dared think Men’s C races were not infused with tactics, strategy, teamwork, and drama, you would be wrong, my friends, as the video clearly documents!  More seriously, Joe has tagged the whole video with running commentary of what’s going on as he makes his way to a 2nd place finish (and edited the race down to a watchable 12 minutes).  I think it’s a great video to pass on to newer riders as he makes a lot of good observations and really covers what he’s thinking about throughout the race.  Great stuff.

Now, on to the race report! Continue reading →

Photos, Race Reports, Road

Joe Near’s fantastic race report from Rutgers

Worth reading! Joe is one of MIT’s new road racers who’s going to take the ECCC by storm. (You can see his photos on his Flickr page.) From an unpromising start to the day, Joe goes on to annihilate the D field:

Having done cyclocross but never having raced on the road, I went into the weekend feeling super strong but nervous. I have been obsessed with tactics during the past few months, but worried about the fact that I haven’t had much chance to practice them. I felt strong enough to race in the Cs, but Spencer asked for volunteers to do the D races, giving me a good excuse to give in to my doubts.

The ITT on Saturday was a blur. I arrived before any of the other MIT cars, it was still dark, and I had no clue where registration was. Continue reading →

News, Photos

Bike rodeo

Last Saturday, five MIT cyclists (well, four cyclists + one alumna) headed to South Boston to volunteer at a kid’s bike rodeo. The event was designed to teach kids and parents about bike safety, handling, mechanical tips, proper helmet-wearing, and how to steal the wheel of a good lead-out train (joke).

It was organized by our fearless and incredibly hard-working coach, Nicole Freedman, who happens also to be the City of Boston’s bike tsarina. Everybody had a good time, and I am pretty sure I met one 5-year-old  named Benjamin who will win the national cyclocross championship in…2022. Stay tuned, I suppose.

Anyway, pictures of the event are up on our Flickr page (which you can also preview to your right).

News, Photos

MIT Cycling—now on Flickr!

Witness the fitness—literally and figuratively: the MIT cycling team now has its own Flickr photostream. In terms of social-media-hipness, we are still sucking the wheel of the White House.

Already it has photos by Kenny Cheung, Nader Shaar, Nick Loomis, and Matt Blackburn.

UPDATED 5/5: As you can (hopefully) see, thanks to the FlickrRSS plugin, the latest six photos from the team’s photostream now appear at the top right of the blog.