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MIT Cycling Team Blog
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Rutgers, day 1

Laura sprintsWe all awoke on Saturday morning knowing the weather would cooperate with the start of the season. But as the early racers warmed up on trainers, and everyone else stood in line for the annual ritual of registering, the spandex layers began to come off. Soon the mercury hit 75°F and almost everyone was down to shorts and jerseys. Freezing temperatures might have handed an advantage to hardy New Englanders like ourselves. But nobody was complaining. The generally festive atmosphere of a collegiate bike race, plus the general enthusiasm of the Rutgers season opener, plus the clear sky and warm air and bright sun, cheered even the least-trained and most equipmentally challenged riders (like yours truly).

The D men were the first to go off, and when D riders Ian Rousseau came in at 6:36 and David Quinn at 6:46, MIT scored its first points of the weekend. Zack LaBry surprised even himself with a time of 6:17, placing him 11th (out of 93) in men’s C, and Jon Dreher came in second in the category, only four seconds over six minutes. Those times were so good they would have put Zack and Jon in eleventh and fifth place in the men’s B category—which was in turn won by MIT’s own José Soltren in a scorching 5:45, the fourth best time of the day, period. Tim Humpton, racing in A’s for the first time, beat half the field. All the while, MIT’s women were tearing up the course as usual. Rachel Bainbridge placed third in her first race in the women’s intro. Laura Ralston came in fifth, Melissa Gymrek came in 11th, and Lindsey Holland was 29th in the B time trial, and Yuri Matsumoto and Zuzka Trnovcova, at eleventh and twelfth in the As, were exactly 1.01 seconds apart. Everyone did well, which isn’t to say that everyone was thrilled with their performance—some people felt they could have gone harder from the gun while others felt they’d gone too hard—but nobody had time to grumble. It was time for the crit.

By the end of the morning the whole of the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference had uprooted and replanted itself forty-five minutes away in the comically picturesque town of Princeton. Everyone hopped on their bikes and checked out the course and its hill, not long enough to be a real climb but not short and steep enough to be a “power climb” either. That hill was where, after crashing early on (and taking advantage of the “free lap” rule), Ian broke away and won the D crit solo (after scoring in both prime laps, too).

John Dreher leads the C packIn men C, Jonathan Dreher came in a superb sixth after beating the pack to second place in all three prime laps (behind only the Princeton rider who had soloed off the front). But Zach LaBry, feeling good after his time trial, was taken out on the first corner of the first lap by a pair of crutches bizarrely stuck into the road. Fortunately scrapes and bruises were the only injuries. (It was a bad day to start your name at the end of the alphabet: Zach Ybarra had been taken out while cornering in the D race.)

The pace slowed a bit for the intro races, where Rachel Bainbridge came in fourth on the women’s race. Matt Blackburn and Leo Luo, two other new racers, placed tenth and eleventh in their intro race. Spencer climbs the wallSpencer Schaber, who was trying racing to see if he liked it, not only came in sixth in men’s intro, but won the contest for best race face of the weekend hands down.

Then came the B races, and MIT simply cleaned up. Laura Ralston won the most points in the primes and then beat everybody else with a perfect sprint to the line while the B men, warming up near the start finish, cheered her on.

Then, in the men’s race, when a pair of riders from Vermont took off, José hauled them back himself. He then proceeded to stay away with one of the UVM riders for the rest of the race and beat him to the line, putting out so much power that he won the sprint without getting out of his saddle. Jose puts out the watts

Yuri and Zuzka racked up plenty of points in the sprint out of a shattered women’s A field. But a short crit was never going to be Tim’s kind of race, especially not when Princeton’s time trial phenom Nick Frey decided to show off to the hometown crowd. Having missed the start signing autographs or something, Frey jumped into the race a lap late, and decided to try lapping the field (à la Easterns last year), which he almost—almost—did.

So at the end of the day the tally showed that MIT had flat-out won, aside from the men’s B time trial, the criteriums (criteria?) in men’s D division 2, women’s B, and men’s B. In other words MIT had won three of the seven races it entered and placed in the top five in two others. And it had been a nice day, too!Yuri climbs, cheered on by David Quinn

ECCC road season kickoff: Rutgers/Princeton, March 7-8

The 2009 road season kicks off this weekend with the annual Rutgers/Princeton races in Piscataway and Princeton, NJ.  The weekend is traditionally the first the road season, and includes one of the only individual time trials, in addition to a criterium and a Sunday circuit race.  The time trial is the first race on Saturday morning and is very short, only 2.7 miles in length.  The winning time last year was under 6 minutes.  The race is almost perfectly flat, but does involve 2 separate 180 degree turns, giving an advantage to technically sound riders.

The Saturday afternoon criterium is on a new, 4-corner course on the Princeton campus.  The race is advertised as having a steep “wall” that racers will climb every lap, and promises to be fast and spectator-friendly since the whole course is accessible.  Sunday’s circuit race, on the Rutgers campus, looks like it will generally be more mellow, but a very long and moderately uphill finishing straightaway will reward patience and lead to an exciting sprint finish.

Check out Men’s B powerhouse José Soltren’s analysis (and maps) of the courses here.

Tim Humpton likes races that feel like battles. He’ll have plenty of those in Men’s A

Q: Where are you from, what are you studying, what year are you?

Tim: I’m from Jamison Pennsylvania. It’s a typical suburban area that is within shouting distance of Philadelphia (around a 40 minute drive) but is still far enough away that the roads are great for cycling. I’m a Junior (class of 2010) and am currently planning to graduate with degrees in Biology and Chemical Engineering (officially Chemical-Biological Engineering). Although I’m not in the lab 24/7 like the grad students on the team, I am doing research in the Amon lab at the Koch Center for Cancer Research here on campus. I’m working with yeast on the question of aneuploidy and its relationship to tumor development. Could it possibly be a cause of tumorigenesis!? Is it just a consequence of the process? Maybe before I graduate I’ll find out something about these questions…

Q: How did you get into cycling?

Originally, I got into cycling as a way to cross train between other sports seasons in my senior year of high school. In high school, as well as in my first two years at MIT, I was a two sport, three season varsity athlete in soccer and track and so obviously, I needed to pick up another sport to pass the time in between. Anyway, at that point training was well and good, especially in scenic Bucks County, but there is only so much scenic riding that a person can handle. I entered one race my first summer because it was practically right on my doorstep, I was tired of just riding for the sake of riding, and I wanted to maybe win a trophy. From then on I was hooked into bike racing. It has everything that I liked about running track, but at a level that was amped up orders of magnitude.

Q: What kind of races do you like, and why?

I like races that end up feeling like battles. My favorite and ideal races are those that have hard changes of pace, lots of long steep climbs, solo breakaways and really anything else that forces everyone in the pack to kind of dig deep. If you are familiar with the running movie Without Limits, I would say that my racing philosophy is similar to Prefontaine’s. I really don’t like sitting in the pack or getting pulled along at a pedestrian pace. I would much rather be at the front or off of the front attacking and making the tempo. Because of this, I would say that I am much more of a road race and stage race man because it seems like these races are the most likely to be long and grueling and I think that this leaves me with the best chance to do well in them.

Q: What are your goals for the season?

Since the racing hasn’t gotten underway yet my goals are all very ambitious. This is my first season of strictly cycling (I stopped running track and playing soccer) and I feel like I am ready to rock the collegiate field. My main personal goal is to win a road race in the A field this year. Tentatively, I think that the Dartmouth and PSU road courses best favor my strengths. I also want to be in the conversation for the conference points race which will entail stacking up some solid performances on a consistent basis. Again, I feel strong going into the season! Obviously, the pinnacle of the season is Nationals, and putting the other aspirations aside, I want to be on top form then and have a season ending goal of a top 8 finish in the RR. And of course, the goal of both the conference and the national team championships.

Pre-Season Racing: Boston Triathlon Team Indoor TT

The MIT Cycling Team brought 8 racers to the major pre-season road event for the year (plus our friend Alex from the New England Conservatory).  We had a great performance throughout the day over 3 different heats.  Congrats to Jose Soltren and Melissa Gymrek for winning the collegiate events for men and women respectively.  My pictures for the event are up on our gallery page.

These team results are promising as we prepare for the Rutgers/Princeton Race next weekend.  Stay tuned for weekly race summaries and pictures.

-Michael Hamilton – MIT Cycling Vice-President

Here are the team results:

MIT Women:
FIRST NAME LAST NAME FINISH TIME AVG MPH AVG WATTS
MELISSA GYMREK 20:20.5 18.88 236.97
ZUZANA TRNOVCOVA 21:22.2 17.97 205.48
MIT Men:
JOSE SOLTREN 17:08.5 22.4 391.88
JON DREHER 17:44.9 21.64 362
MICHAEL HAMILTON 19:09.1 20.05 291.36
ZACH LABRY 19:28.5 19.72 292.95
NICK LOOMIS 20:55.8 18.35 304.33
CAL LANKTON 21:04.2 18.23 253.07
ALEX CHALEFF 21:14.9 18.07 255.21

Cyclocross Nationals Wrapup

As you’ve probably heard, five of us (Tim Humpton, Jose Soltren, Kate Harris, Cim Wortham, and myself) flew to Kansas City this weekend to contest the Collegiate Cyclocross National Championships.  We stayed in Lawrence, KS with Nick Loomis’s wonderful aunt and uncle Kathy and Howard Ebmeier.  Nick traveled home early for the holidays to serve as our soigneur, chef, and photographer, taking pressure of us and making the weekend a lot of fun.  Jose thinks he gained a pound in 24 hours thanks to our hosts’ wonderful cooking.

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To glory in the wind tunnel and beyond