W&M Race Weekend: Part 1

William & Mary Race Weekend

The Commute

After discussion at the meeting on Wednesday, the team planned to meet at the Coliseum at 4:00pm on Friday to load up and get underway. 4:30 sharp was to be the departure time. As usual, the team was running a few minutes behind. Blame the traffic--which is terrible on Friday in Morgantown anyway--or the plethora of other excuses presented (mostly from myself and Jimmy for arriving 15 minutes late), none of it made a difference. Past a few jokes, no one complained. Everyone was excited about the prospect of a warm weekend of racing on clean country roads

6 hours. That is roughly the amount of time it takes to travel from Morgantown, WV to Williamsburg, VA. (+ or - 30 minutes, depending on the driver) 6 hours is a lot of time. Almost agonizingly so. In Ryan’s truck, Broski and Ryan McGovern reportedly killed time by delving into discussions on all things manly, which undoubtedly prompted some interesting input from Brad Dodson and Brian DeCann. Elliott Ianello and myself were strategically placed together in my SUV so we could talk incessantly without bothering anyone. Sequoya, who was along for the ride this weekend to learn about bicycle racing, played impartial referee and mediated our bickering. That left Ryan and Jimmy together in Jimmy’s truck.

Around 7:30 pm, some wise soul made the decision to stop our group so we could all eat dinner at Boston Market in Frederick, Maryland. The food was amazing. So much so that the rest of the trip to Williamsburg was a forgettable blur. Broski showed off his unique ability to simultaneously contort his fingers and face/mouth into entertaining gestures. Other than that, intercar shenanigans were surprisingly kept to minimum.

Accommodations

The hotel was a place to sleep. Lets leave it at that. Truth be told, American University and a few of the other teams were jealous at how much money we saved.

Racing

The WVU student newspaper, the Daily Anthenaeum, published an article about our weekend:

Cycling races at William & Mary, heads to NYC Friday

Additional Details

While the DA pointed out the high points of the weekend, there were several other interesting occurrences.

Accident-prone Elliott somehow managed to rip his rear derailleur off his bike mid race. This gives him the unique honor of being the only person on our team to have three non-destroyed road bike frames in currently un-raceable condition.

Brian Decann was robbed of a top 10 finish in men’s D because of an accident at the 1000m mark before the end of the race. He raced really well and just hit a stroke of bad luck. He’s got the battle scars to prove he fought to the finish though.

Ryan Post, who helped officiate the races, brought his road bike with him for the weekend to ride around with us after our races were over. While loading his bike into the truck in Morgantown, Dr. Brock Von D , our resident bike surgeon, noticed Ryan had a greater than positive 10% rise in his stem, his handlebars dropped low enough to make a track racer giddy, brake cables tight enough to strum, and two shifter hoods at distinctively different heights (by a good 2 inches at least). Yes, a retro Euro cyclist silently died somewhere. Even by relatively relaxed WV standards, his bike looked like the velo-equivalent of a Saturday morning hangover. By the end of the weekend, however, his bike was back to acceptable condition.

More details to come . .. .