Baylor University Race Weekend 2011

So this past weekend we loaded up the trailer and set course for Waco, TX. Yeah, also known as Middle of Nowhere, as well as the place where they had that incident in 1993. Honestly, folks, that's all I could remember about Waco until I found out that the Dr. Pepper Museum was only a couple of blocks over from the hotel (too bad we couldn't visit). Regardless, we got to the hotel room after a long car ride on Friday and I wolfed down a can of beans with onions and salsa before getting some sleep. Sleep was a major priority considering we were all pretty tired from travelling.

There's seriously a town called Cut and Shoot, TX.

The sunset was beautiful on Friday.

Saturday morning consisted of breakfast with the Rice and MSU teams at the hotel and then an early departure to the road race. Once we arrived, the race officials directed us to a field where we were to set up our bikes. Okay, no problem. But upon opening the car door, I remembered what goes in fields. Cows. Cows that leave their dung everywhere. We also saw some cacti growing, which made riding our bikes to the road a bit tricky.

Almost stepped on this not-so-little surprise while exiting the car

Yeah, that's the first wild cactus I've ever seen.

The road race went pretty smoothly, and David got a pretty decent placing in the Category D race. I was in contention for a top 10 spot but wiped out when a couple of riders went down in front of me. Fortunately, I landed in a ditch after hitting the pavement, which was convenient. My knee was extremely sore (probably from my bike clipping itself out for me during the fall), but I can remember yelling at the people in the follow car (that stopped to assist us) to "help the kid who's down." Whoops, I forgot that all of us that crashed were still down when I said that. Actually, a rider from Rice sounded seriously injured, and I vividly remember watching him hit the road before wiping out myself. Not the best memory to be seared into my brain. Once I was able to get up I walked over to him and made sure his head was still in the game by asking him his name, the date, etc. He seemed to be doing okay but I told him not to move while some race volunteers called the ambulance. He was at breakfast the next day and we found out that he had a broken collar bone, some stitches, and no concussion, which is very fortunate considering how hard he went down. All of Tulane Cycling was relieved to hear that he didn't suffer any head injuries.

Those of us that walked away from the crash (and still had functioning bikes) lined up to get back into the race when I noticed that everything around me was brighter. Apparently I had lost my Oakleys in the crash, and I rushed to go find my sunglasses under a mound of dirt while those riders headed off. After getting back on course, another group of Category D riders came along and helped pull me to the finish. Another teammate of mine tweaked his knee in the race and finished right at the back of that group. In addition to the Category D road race injuries, a Category C rider for Tulane also wiped out (twice). It was a sore Saturday for all of us.

At least I finished in one piece.

Not so bad after all.

Next item to purchase: new bib shorts.

We had almost identical injuries on opposite sides of our bodies.

Saturday afternoon was a bit warmer (read: 95 degrees Fahrenheit), and we got to the course set up our bikes for the team time trial. The men's team captain informed David and I that we were to race in Category C for the time trial, which made us feel all the better (pause, not). We hydrated as best we could and rolled up to the start line. The race was only 9 miles or so, but the heat got to us, and the uphill finish wasn't easy. One teammate in Category B almost suffered a heat stroke and took a while to normalize after finishing his race. Not a fun way to end the day.

Getting ready to line up for the team time trial.

Category C time trial finish.

After showering and going out to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, we returned to the hotel for some rest before Sunday's crits. A few of us watched some Comedy Central before bed, which was pretty entertaining.

We got some good Mexican food.

Sunday morning rolled around and we headed off to the criterium course. I had to run back into the hotel to grab my leg warmers since the temperature dropped about 45 degrees overnight. Great. After setting up our bikes, David and I warmed up for the Category D race. Once the crit started, he pedaled into the lead group while I hung back with some Rice riders. We worked our way forward until the end of the race, and after looking at the results, David and I came in 5th and 7th, respectively. Not too bad for a cold day.

It was cold.

Very cold.

Make-me-bitter cold.

And someone needed to bring a vuvuzela.

Not bad!

During the long ride home, we hung out, ate cake, and shot the breeze. Remember when I said I'd be able to cope with Waco if there were cupcakes? Cake does the trick too.

LSU Race Weekend 2011 - Carpe Diem

Hey y'all,

First of all, listen to this video while you read (it will put you in a good mood):

Yeah, we played some pre-race tunes to get into the groove of things.

It works.

This race weekend at Louisiana State University was packed with above average performances by many of our riders. It started out with a Saturday morning team time trail on River Road, followed by a criterium on LSU's campus in the afternoon. The road race was held Sunday morning and had higher-than-normal distances for each racing category. Two Tulane cyclists won all three races in their respective divisions, and many other teammates gained top 10 finishes (and other assorted wins) in their races. We seized the day (I mean weekend).

Saturday morning's sunrise over the levee

Teammate going over paperwork-related shenanigans with a race official

That stadium is huge! Now I know where all of Louisiana's money went...

Only in Louisiana...

Post-crash in the crit (running to the finish line in socks)

Hanging out before the road race on Sunday

Post-race shenanigans

One teammate (who is a fraternity brother of mine, who also happens to be a reverend, and who is in medical school) won all three races in his category. He somehow found the time to study between races. Another teammate was able to cat up to the Women's A category after Sunday's race, which is great for the team. She won the race weekend for her category (read: all three races) and gained the officials' approval to race at a higher level, so we'll be supporting her in that endeavor. Overall, it was a great race weekend with a stellar performance by Tulane Cycling.

Post crit - Yup, #1, second win in one day

Next week we race at Baylor University in Waco, TX. People say it's a small town, but hopefully it'll have cupcakes. I can cope if there are cupcakes.

Mardi Gras, Fires, and Fire Ants

Oh boy, where to begin...

This was Mardi Gras weekend, folks. Yes, five days jam-packed with shenanigans (for most people) and sleep (for me) here in New Orleans. (I can't believe I'm blogging about it on Fat Tuesday itself, but that's besides the point.) We got our respective training sessions done, but we also made sure to fit them around the Mardi Gras parade schedule. The entire city stops functioning during this holiday weekend, and you can't really get much cycling done if there are are 250,000 drunk people blocking the road. Planning your rides can go a long way this time of year.

Thursday started off with a team dinner before the parades, which was an ingenious idea. A teammate cooked up a Mexican feast and invited those of us in the area over for a quick bite to eat (and for some reason I couldn't say no). The food was very good and I even picked up some recipe ideas during the event. The guacamole was the best I've ever had, and my teammate added mango to one of her pico de gallo dishes, which left me pretty speechless. Yup, speechless, like in the romance movies. Deer caught in the headlights. Lance Armstrong doing trigonometry. It was that good, folks. I'm pretty sure I made the biggest dent in the pico/mango dish, and the team can attest to that. Hey, at least I didn't make the biggest dent in all of the dishes, right? After dinner, we stepped outside (read: across the street) and watched the Krewe of Muses parade.

Mexican food to kick off the weekend.

On Saturday, the team woke up at 5:30am to volunteer for the Warrior Dash (the race with insane obstacles) over in Norco, LA. It made sense for us to help out with a running race since so many volunteers come to our cycling races. So we entered our vehicles and got on the road by 6:00am. The weather was a bit drizzly, but we parked at the race venue, threw on some raincoats and made the best of the situation. The race organizers split us into various volunteer groups once we got there, and one of the coordinators told my group that we would get to have the "fun" job. I didn't quite believe her until she actually told us what we were doing (I thought she was being sarcastic in using the word "fun"). She basically told us that we would get to light fires on the race course all day, which is a pretty awesome job considering the fact that most of us weren't allowed to light fires when we were kids.

Groggy much?

Laugh all you want, but this guy most likely had no problem getting out of the grass parking lot after the rain storm.

Enough firepower to fend off the warriors.

The only drawback to that field was the vast number of fire ant mounds, which I didn't quite see until it was too late. I have a newfound respect for those sneaky insects. You most likely glossed over the topic of fire ants while you were in grade school, and if you're anything like me, you probably didn't pay much attention to the descriptive words such as "stinging," "painful," and "venom." But those words became vividly enhanced once I stumbled upon the ant nest. Whoops. It's more painful than it looks, but I should have been watching where I was going in the first place. Note to self: Wear eyeglasses more often in order to avoid situations like this one.

My legs after the catastrophic invasion of fire ants.

Real fire (not fire ants).

Teammate looking official.

Big random spider.

The guy in first place as he approached our burning logs.

Yes, that's Snow White, a dream come true.

The chip timing system stayed intact through all the mud and shenanigans.

Once the race was over, we all got into our respective vehicles (after a short storm warning) and drove home. The fire that we were stoking made it onto the local news website later that day, and I am quite proud of it. Not bad for a half day's work!

Fast forward to yesterday (Lundi Gras). My roommate and I walked over to the parade route and caught the Krewe of Proteus and Krewe of Orpheus parades. All in all, it was a pretty good evening with not much to complain about. We ran into some old friends who recently graduated, and after the parades some of us headed home to rest up for the actual Mardi Gras parades, which will be going on in a few hours.

Happy Mardi Gras

UT Austin Race Weekend 2011 - Shenanigans at Their Finest

This weekend must have been the craziest weekend I've spent with the cycling team. It involved brownies, long hours of driving, and a lot of bike racing (a road race, team time trial, and criterium to be exact) at UT Austin.

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.

Grabbing Life by the Texas Longhorns

So today was a very [un]productive day, but it was an important one nonetheless. A friend and I attended a birthday party at Superior Grill and it was good eats all afternoon. Seriously, folks, go try this place if you haven't already. In addition to the great Mexican food, a raspberry and Chantilly cake (which costs more than my entire Tulane Cycling kit, by the way) was brought out and we ate that for dessert. I do tend to boast that I'm a pretty good eater when it comes to all things ice cream and cake related (there are references to prove it), but this cake was so rich that I was only able to get through two pieces before throwing in the towel. I guess that shatters any dreams of establishing a viable competitive eating career.

Win!

After the party, we (all 30 of us) went back to our respective dorms/apartments to try and undo the food coma (but failed pretty miserably). It's a given that Mexican food sits in your stomach like a rock, but heavy birthday cake is like adding sandbags to the mix. I ended up in the fetal position but it was well worth it.

Upon recovering from the aforementioned meal, I joined most of the Tulane Cycling team for a meeting with Kenny Bellau, a road cycling mastermind who rides for Herring Cycling. If it's got wheels and pedals, this guy can probably get it across a finish line in first place. It was pretty cool that we got to pick up some racing strategies from him (as well as catch a glimpse of his pronounced cycling tan).

It almost looks like he's wearing an undershirt.

Seriously.

One of us is definitely represented by a button in this schematic of a paceline.

During the meeting we were told what to watch out for during road races, time trials, and crits. Especially during our races in Austin next week. More importantly, we were briefed on the yellow line rule. It states that cyclists can't cross the yellow line in a road race without getting disqualified or sent to the back of the pack. Lame sauce. Apparently there is a race official in Texas (who shall remain nameless) who is a total cycling dictator and sticks to that rule like butter to a stack of flapjacks. (I'm pretty sure I heard some old World War II words being used to describe her.) She once tried to get Kenny's team in deep trouble for cruising around pre-race without a helmet. Seriously, aren't there better things for an official to be doing instead of griping about professional cyclists' head wear during pre-race preparations? I'm pretty sure that more dangerous shenanigans are going on in the peloton during the race. Whatever. So to summarize, we should pedal hard and give it 105% (read: all we've got) next week, because Texas ain't easy and we have to show 'em that the new squad on the block ain't here to play nice.

Mardi Gras Flat-athon

So I rolled out of bed at 4:45am on Sunday and got my stuff together before heading to the Mardi Gras Marathon start line. It was a bit chilly outside, so we backtracked and stopped by a teammate's place to pick up some extra leg warmers (mine were in the mail). Traffic was light, but very few roads were open. After weaving through the road closures we finally showed our All-Access Pass to an on-duty cop (about 200 yards from the start line) and parked in one of the reserved lots.

Parking privileges granted!

All was well until we took our bikes out of the trunk and noticed that my bike had a flat. The previous flat had been four days earlier, but I thought to myself, Okay, no problem, I have a spare tube to save the day! Five minutes later, and within three pedal strokes, I heard the distinct pfffffffff of a pinch flat (on a parking lot full of seashells...yes, seashells in New Orleans). Go figure. Apparently, we didn't get the tire all the way onto the rim and effectively destroyed any chance we had of escorting the lead car of the Mardi Gras Marathon.

So my teammate and I put our bikes back into his SUV and started driving. He had competed in a fencing tournament the day before and wanted to unwind a bit, so we weaved (again) through the road closures and found a store that sells Blue Bell Mardi Gras ice cream. In addition to the ice cream, we made sure to pick up soda (to make ice cream floats) and banana bread (to make our 7:30am junk food breakfast seem more legitimate). We looked a bit out of place showing up to the grocery store in our Tulane kits, but the cashier and bagger both commented on our "athletic abilities," which felt pretty good. But my favorite quote of the day would have to be my one from my teammate (right after we left the grocery store):

"Let's compare our potential morning with our actual morning. Our actual morning involved driving around in a warm car, buying ice cream, pastries, and soda, and having fun. And our potential morning involved riding around in the cold, doing inane tasks for a grumpy old man."
-Teammate who shall go unnamed

Us (the lead cyclists) in the ice cream aisle while the race was going on.

This was a pretty interesting flavor, to say the least.

Once we demolished the half gallon of ice cream, banana bread, and soda, I decided to take a nap and then go for a run. A very long run. A very long run through some shady neighborhoods. I'm still recovering from the delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) that came from the run, but it was worth it. Four pounds of ice cream is no small feat, and running afterwards probably isn't on the list of the most logical things to do after such a meal. But I did it anyway.

Fast forward to Valentine's Day (the best day of the year to receive care packages). I got a package in the mail, complete with cupcakes, assorted Brazilian chocolates from Nestle Brasil and Garoto, Japanese Pocky, English muffins, cycling socks by DeFeet, and leg warmers. It's pretty hard to beat that (even though I did receive four pints of ice cream for Valentine's Day the night before, which was pretty win-tastic).

I had to study all day (and all night) during Valentine's Day, so last night I baked some heart-shaped Valentine's Day Funfetti cupcakes (as well as a funfetti cake) for various friends. Oh, and strawberry flavored bread (which I kept mostly for myself). It was a relaxing night that helped me take my mind off of the battery acid that's running through my leg muscles.

Funfetti cupcakes.

This got excellent reception from the ladies.

Team Bonding in New Orleans

Hey y'all,

I know it's been awhile since the last post, but things have been quite busy. Last Saturday Carlo hosted a team barbecue over at his house, and it was pretty gnarly. We got the tunes crankin' and the burgers cookin', and from then on it became a pretty fun team bonding event. I ended up eating quite a few burgers as well as most of a batch of brownies. But fear not! I assure you, they were good brownies. Good brownies that happen to be good for you, too. Apparently, the teammate who baked them used whole wheat flour, so the meal wasn't that unhealthy overall. After the food coma subsided we played pool and shot the breeze until nightfall.

Teammate, super focused on the task at hand (talking to his girlfriend).

Of course there's the obligatory road bike in the room.

If Tulane offered it, this guy would have a Ph.D. in Billiard Studies.

One of the many good burgers. Note the carrots and cherry tomatoes in the background.

Healthy(-ish) brownies!

In addition to honing our barbecuing skills, the team has begun doing more serious training rides (our schedule even allows for two-a-days for those absurdly dedicated cyclists on our squad). Yesterday I tagged along for a sprint workout along the levee when it started to rain. Hard. I also happened to get a flat tire about 6 or 7 miles (estimated) away from home. On top of that, I had a CO2 inflator with me, but no tire lever or tube (Murphy's Law), so I was SOL for a good 5 minutes until another rider stopped to help. Keep in mind that it was really wet at this point, and changing a flat in that weather wasn't a good time. In fact, it was a bad time. And to further add pressure to the stress nerves, I had to quickly shower and put on some dry clothes in order to catch a downtown shuttle for a meeting.

At the aforementioned meeting, a teammate and I volunteered to escort the lead car for the Mardi Gras Marathon. (Actually, he spoke up and volunteered me on my behalf. Go figure.) The elite runners will most likely be 800 meters behind us at all times, but we'll have to stop and mark the infamous New Orleans pot holes with cones and then sprint back to the car. Ad nauseum. The race coordinator personally told my teammate and I that we should probably quit now if we weren't prepared for the hammerfest (hammering on the pedals, not getting hammered). The word quit must have not been in my vocabulary last night because we signed up for the job. (I did notice a sudden increase in heart rate when the former U.S. Olympic track coach gave us the rundown of what we were to expect.) Regardless of the situation, I don't want to be passed by some runner doing 12 miles per hour (5 minute miles). That would be bad publicity. So I guess we'll have to eat some carbs at Saturday's Tulane Cycling fundraiser. Come join us and support the team!