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