The brownies were definitely the highlight of the ride to Austin.
We got pretty bored on the ride to Austin, and one teammate actually commented that the Texas border with Louisiana is like the jaw of death.
Jaw of death
When we got to the first race on Saturday morning, we saw the Team Garmin-Transitions van and knew they came to take the cake. It was actually the younger development team, but they were still really fast! I heard them passing us (read: lapping us) in the road race and they sounded like a jet engine whizzing by! I guess their $8,000 bikes are more aerodynamic than I thought. (It's essentially like taking Lebron James, having him sign up for 9 credit hours with Dwyane Wade at the University of Miami, and then having them win collegiate championships left and right. Not. Fair.) But the Garmin-Transitions racers were in a completely different category, so it wasn't that big of a deal since we weren't racing them. The course was interesting and it had some Texas-sized road reflectors embedded into it (as if they were placed there strategically). This made it difficult to ride near the yellow line, but the ride became a bit smoother as the field thinned out.
This team was fast!
One collegiate racer ran over my teammate's rear wheel in the road race and destroyed 4 of his spokes. Not fun.
Gotta get the laughs somehow.
One of our riders came in 2nd place in the Category C road race, and our Category D team (the one that included the guy whose wheel got destroyed) won the time trial by at least two minutes. Our women's team also won their time trial by a long shot (they were so fast that they passed me during my time trial and disappeared into the distance). The criterium races were pretty intense, and we came away with some good results (2nd place finish for the category D race, and 2nd and 3rd place finishes for the ladies).
These two riders at the front the whole time.
It was very close.
Mass start.
This was very fast-paced.
Wheel pit.
Our women's rider who came in 3rd in the criterium.
These big state schools that attended the race had no idea of what we were packing, and they most-likely assumed that we were going to get dropped immediately in most races. They also probably thought less of us because we had fleurs-de-lis on our jerseys and shorts, but we showed them what we're made of (and it ain't all sunshine and rainbows).
Six months ago, I didn't even dream of racing, and this weekend was a culmination of the entire team's hard work and dedication. Yeah, I got dropped pretty hard in the road race and the time trial, but the team did exceptionally well in the other events, especially considering it was our first collegiate race appearance. Texas actually has some pretty nice stars out at night, which we don't get to see too often since we live in a city. Perhaps we're the next stars of the conference. We actually have quite a few points in the standings and we're getting more cohesive as a team. We'll find out the official results later this week.
Team photo.
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