WHAT A GW MOUNTAIN BIKE RACER?!?

Straight from Phil Zap -

GWU Cycling Team- 2011 MTB Racing takes 2nd

After a busy schedule of racing every weekend rain or shine in Sept and Oct the GWU Cycling Mountain Bike Team has taken 2^nd place in the Division 2 standings at season’s end. Trumped by a stellar performance by a large, strong team from the College of William & Mary, GWU was able to best 4 other schools (Wake Forest, Campbell University, University of Richmond, and Duke) to maintain a second place seat with a one man team. Chasing an MS in Systems Engineering in addition to the racing circuit Phillip Zaprzalka has sported the Buff and Blue of GWU in all available MTB disciplines available this year. From the rocky drops of Downhill and Super D courses, to the individual sprints of uphill and wooded Time Trials, spinning laps in the pack for Short Track, and wrapping up every weekend with an enduring Cross Country the GWU logos got calls out from the crowd. “Gee-Dub” cheers were shouted upon the one man team also known by “chops” for his ever extending sideburns. As the events were held around the Atlantic Conference Region primarily in the Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains, it does make for a difficult travel schedule, but taking classes at the Newport News satellite campus has offered ease of access for racing and most effectively for opportune location for studies. Perhaps with the upcoming Cyclocross season in November and December students from the Metro and satellite campuses can build strong team dynamics and shared performance gains. All Said: Congrats Gee-Dub, and keep the rubber side down!

Your one-man wrecking crew. What an animal.

What We Have Been Doing For The Last Month

Some of you may be asking, what has GW been up to? That jerk that writes all their blog posts seems to have forgotten about it. So here is what we have been doing:

Some of our guys raced in the ECCC a few times. John went to NYC for the Grant's Tomb race and both him and Josh went to Philly for the Phlyer. They seemed to have a good time.

We had a miserable weekend at Wake. It was raining and cold most of the weekend, Matt had what turned out to be a mild case of strep throat and was generally just awfully sick, and everybody got dropped all weekend. Ben had somebody put their skewer into his wheel and shred it. Nick discovered that he was not ready for the As. The drive took forever. A bright spot came in the form of Josh scoring a top 10 in the C crit.

Then we got a weekend off.

Which brings us to this past weekend. We all had a great time in West Virginia. Here is the synopsis:

-Managed to get out of town on Friday, we thought before rush hour, but we were wrong. Drove through clouds, past dudes burning piles of furniture, and without the benefit of GPS navigation to get to Morgantown, where we:
-Stayed with a WVU rider who graciously hosted the 7 of us. Friday saw us making a giant pot of spaghetti, playing various beverage-related games (and First to the Line!), cramming 4 people into the loft area of this house, and generally having a good time.
-Got up Saturday and headed for Clarksburg. Prepped for the crit.
-C race: Josh 14th, Ben 22nd, Andrew 24th, John 26th.
-B race: Nick 8th, pal-of-the-team Nate DNF.

-3/4 race: Nick 10th, Andrew 23rd, alum Dan crashes and goes to the hospital (Nick goes with).Nick, Andrew, and Dan at the line for the 3/4. GW representing DC.

-5 race: Josh 5th, John takes a prime for some sandwich action.Josh and John clip in during the 5 race.

-Team gets dinner and yuks it up.
-Return to host housing, everybody too tired to do anything.
-Sunday begins early. Adventures on the way to the RR include: extraordinarily limited visibility (flying by instrument down the interstate, almost); single-lane dirt road that Matt's car can only just barely clear (Nick gets out to spot and spends the rest of the path calling out holes like a rally navigator), thanks google maps.
-C race. Nick, Nate, Matt spend half an hour throwing rocks into and racing sticks down a creek. Ben makes front group, Josh and Andrew in chase group, John tries to quit and is harassed into riding another lap. Ben finds himself off the front with a VT rider who promptly crashes, Ben sits up. Josh and Andrew hang on, Andrew manages to surf wheels in the same way that he did last year to a top 20 finish.

-B race. Nick and Nate are dropped, join a chase group and claw their way back to the field, get dropped again, join the gruppetto, and enjoy what has become a beautiful day on a scenic course.Nate climbs the hill in his sweet plaid.

This face tells you everything; fellow area racer Vinny chases Nick up the hill.

-Sheetz milkshakes.

We had a good time. WVU were good hosts.

Your rolling Colonials are now mentally steeling themselves for this weekend's ACCC championships at VT. By all accounts, the RR course will be killer.

Photos by John the III

Bridging Gaps Across Teams - Duke Weekend

This weekend's rolling Colonial contingent went to Durham and had a pretty good time, generally.

SATURDAY: ROAD RACING IN SCENIC "BAHAMA"

The RR Saturday was in Bahama, NC. Our guys had mixed results.

The Ds were first again - Josh, Ben, and John set off with a field in which almost everyone had trouble clipping in up a slight incline (though Josh got his correct). At the beginning of the race, John had a slight mechanical that sent him to the back of the field, while our other two set about following the motion of an uneasy peloton. The most prominent climb on the course was approximately 2 miles from the start/finish, and with the Ds only completing one (14.25 mile) lap, the hill provided most of the crucial action of the race. Up the hill, Ben took off, Josh stayed more or less where he was, and John fell off the pace. Ben dropped some knowledge on the field down the finishing stretch to take 2nd, while Josh finished 9th and John 18th.Josh and Ben get ready

Ben charges down the stretch to take 2nd

Andrew showed the C field what another week of training gets you, and finished 27th, performing better in the field than the previous weeks.

To finish up GW's day of racing, Nick took to the streets in the Bs. He was having fun and executing his plan of sitting in all day in the large field, but if you thought the D pack was nervous, well, hey, you haven't met this year's B field. Nick made an attempt to chase back on, along with the UNC rider that went down as well, but the two decided to just watch the finish instead.Nick has way too much fun with this

No, that isn't any of our guys crashing, but this is nuts

Your heroes then adjourned to the team hotel.

However, Saturday was made much more fun by the post-race activities: GW went to dinner with the guys from William and Mary staying down the hall, and then spent the evening hanging loose with the other teams at the Days Inn - WVU, UMD, and Hopkins. Fun was had, noise was made in the courtyard, and maybe, just maybe, a children's bike was ridden into a pool (we will neither confirm nor deny this statement). ACCC teams bonded over bicycles and hilarity.

SUNDAY: MAYBE IF WE ASK NICELY, IT WILL RAIN A LITTLE HARDER

Sunday was a technical parking lot crit, on a course which went from "wet" to "wetter" to "underwater" as rain picked up over the course of the morning.

The Ds kicked it off. Josh discovered his big chainring and the concept of "hairodynamics" (we are not sure what this means either). Ben went on the attack (Josh did some blocking and said it made him feel "super pro all over") but paid for it, as he bonked a little more than halfway through the race and fell from OTF to OTB. Josh hung tough and used his newly discovered big chainring to win the group sprint for 3rd! John hammered the entire way to finish 8th. Ben rolled in at 13th.

The Cs started racing with Andrew and Luke, who rolled in at 9:24 for a 9:30 race. Because the officials knew him, they allowed him to race numberless and told him to sort out his registration later. Luke stayed in the top 10 of the strung-out field the whole race, keeping various doomed solo attacks in sight, and finished 6th. Andrew moved up from the day before, to finish 23rd.

Look closely! There are 2 GW racers at the starting line of the C race!

Just before the B race, the rain started. Nick toed the line in the downpour and tried not to worry too much about it. However, the sheets of rain and puddles of water proved too much for his twice-crashed psyche, and he watched the race ride away from him in each of the 9 corners of the course, unable to pull back enough on each straightaway to make a difference. When he took his gloves off after the race, he was able to wring absurd quantities of water out of them.Nick was carrying his glasses in his mouth?

Everyone's bikes got clean in the rainstorm that the team then had to drive home through.

The GW Ds have been putting up some sweet results. If you see them, tell them to upgrade.

The team now heads into a rest weekend, created by the void left in the ACCC schedule by the cancellation of the GW home weekend, which is really too bad.

Photos by John. Body by milk.

In Which It Is About A Million Degrees Warmer For The Navy Weekend Than The Year Prior

Do you guys remember last year's Navy weekend? Where it was snowing while our first guys were warming up for the TT? And everybody was miserable for the crit? It was SO COLD.

Well, this year's crit was a little bit warmer. Not much, but enough to make a difference. The TT, however, saw the sun coming out and temperatures hitting a downright balmy 60+. Seriously, it got hot.

Without further ado, a summary of our efforts:

NAVAL ACADEMY CRITERIUM MADNESS

Matt looks around pensively

-Josh and John in the Ds. The pair did some (hush falls over the room) attacking! Our D racers are growing up. John thinks he could have attacked harder, and expressed surprise that people would try to dive-bomb the hairpin turn in the Ds. Josh seemed to really enjoy himself, as well - he made it into the front group despite staying in his small ring the whole race (with the team yelling at him to shift up) and managed a 6th place finish. John finished 9th.

Andrew fights the gorilla

-Andrew in the Cs, who described his effort as "a poor showing." His "poor showing" still netted a top 20 finish, though he expressed that his fitness right now lacks a "pointy end" for following accelerations.

Nick looks over the effects of his post-crash attack

-In the Bs, we had Nick and (sort of) Nate, our Notre Dame guest rider/tagalong. Nate "caught a huge case of stupid" and found himself at the back, where he soon fell victim to the relentless accordioning of the pack on the narrow course. Despite a strong "TTT effort" with Chris from Georgetown and a few other riders, Nate got pulled about halfway through the race. Also about halfway through the race, Nick, who had been working his way up through the pack, "got involved in an incident" wherein another rider hooked his bars and he crashed spectacularly. Fortunately, he got back up mostly unscathed, and was able to muscle his way to a 7th place finish.

Trina soaks it in

-Last for the day was Trina, competing in her first race ever, in the Women's C! She had fun, and said it was really hard. However, with the team cheering her on, she was able to outsprint her race-mate and finish 4th!

The team decamped to their own homes for the evening, to return with a vengeance for the time trial the next day, though not before stopping for burritos in scenic Annapolis.

THROW YOURSELF AGAINST THE WALL TIME TRIAL INSANITY

More GW riders lacing up for the time trial. EVERYONE, without fail, cited the awesomeness of the "SHUT UP LEGS" chalked on the road about 2km from the finish line. We don't know who did it, but we thank you. It helped everybody.
-Trina apparently was not dissuaded by one day of pain, and came out for the time trial, riding to 5th place!
-Josh steps up for his first time trial and claims to hate it - but ends up finishing 8th in the Ds, the highest-placed GW D rider.
-John hammers for 3 1/2 miles and then drops his chain, and loses 90 seconds to it. Finishes 9th but feels he could've done better absent his chainsplosion.
-Ben discovers his dislike/hate for hills as he rides to 12th. He swears to be ready to do many hill repeats in Rock Creek Park.
-Andrew puts his grind-it-out fitness to good use, riding ("hammering long and hammering hard") to 11th in the Cs and his best finish so far this year. He promises "major renovations to the pain cave."
-Catherine makes an appearance in Women's A, pedaling hard but "not hard enough" as she rides to 2nd. She pulls a "Rich" and tastes her breakfast a few times along the way.
-Nate is the first B rider out of the gate, thanks to his status as a new out-of-conference dude. He uses the VT girl who started in front of him as a rabbit to ride to 12th, earning some points. Then on the way home we introduce him to Sleigh Bells, which has been rocking our faces off in car rides for months already.
-Nick listens to his legs, feels the sensations, and pedals a supple cadence in riding to 4th, completely blocking out the yelling of his teammates at the finish line and the snot, sweat, and drool running off his face.

Following the race, the team restocked the pain cave with some Mexican food on the way home, in preparation for next week's visits to it at Duke.

Ready, set, ride. Weather is predicted nice for most of the rest of the week - get out and enjoy it!