NOW U23 Collegiate Cycling Championships

Hi everybody,
For those who don't know me (I think I've met most at one time or another), I'm one of the U25s and have spent a good chunk of the season racing collegiate races along with Danny Heeley for UCSB. I apologize for the length of the report-it is two races. A few of us qualified individually but for the first time in a long time we did not qualify as a team due to some rule changes.

Madison, Wisconsin hosted this year's nationals which always includes a Road Race, a Criterium and a Team Time Trial. The trip started off well- we ran into the great UCSB Alumnus and NOW member David Adler at LAX. The race started with poor weather and due to being form California we were a little under prepared leading to a weird experience trying to explain to a clerk at a pharmacy why I needed latex gloves, Vaseline and some sort of warming oil. She wasn't a cyclist.

I will try not to go into too many details that are unique to collegiate cycling, but one of the strange aspects of collegiate cycling is that pros and graduate students can race. This makes things very interesting and creates a rather large disparity in age and skill levels. Racers have to be Category 3 riders or above-most are 1s and 2s.


The Road Race:
The race organizers managed to put the race in the only hills in Wisconsin and they had a state park just to honor one of the few interesting geological features in their state. The D1 men were to race 73 miles and the total climbing was to top 8000 ft. I'm not exactly a skinny climber but none of the climbs were quite terrible enough that I didn't think I could make it over them. We were to ride out down a neutral steep descent after getting staged rider by rider then stage again to start the circuits, 15 mile laps. Terrible idea. Another interesting aspect of the day was that it was 40 degrees and raining and with 140 college kids going for one jersey, it was going to be a fun neutral roll out. Indeed it was one of the scarier experiences of my life that turned extremely frustrating when we didn't stop to stage again and kept going, pinning the descent.

The big teams going for the team omnium title, the biggest goal in all of collegiate cycling, were clearly marking each other. The teams included Marian University, Midwestern State University (located in Texas), Lees-Mcrae, Fort Leisure/Lewis, CU Boulder and UC Davis. If you haven't heard of these schools, don't worry, they are small universities that emphasize cycling that I hadn't heard of until I raced collegiate. Nothing seemed to really get away and I had to fight my way to the front.I really cannot give much of a race report after the first lap- I flatted which was less than ideal. The course was brutal, the rain was terrible and the situation in the pack was just chaos. After flatting, I got a wheel from one of the Shimano Neutral Support Cars but the effort was futile with the wind and the pack still going pretty fast. It was frustrating to say the least but motivating for the next day.It was a race of attrition won by a true hard man, Blake Anton of Cal Poly SLO. He guest rode for NOW at Redlands and rode a great race actually trying to set up his teammate, a pro mountain biker, who took third.


The Criterium:
The D1 men's race took place at 6:15 PM on Saturday night, literally around the State Capital Building. The course was four corners (weird to have such a basic course for collegiate nationals) with a little elevation change. It was right down town near the University and the crowd was absolutely massive and loud. The weather was cold and windy, about 40 degrees but dry. Staging and theatrics took a solid frigid twenty minutes. But with the sound of the gun, everything seemed to go crazy. It was a Pro 1,2 crit in cat. 5 form.The problem with collegiate racing is that there is no control. The biggest teams have 4 guys and because the strongest teams are vying for team overall, the strong teams want to put as many guys as far up as possible in the final sprint-which a lot of times means not winning and not leading out.

The crit itself was insane, fun and extremely fast and dangerous, averaging 29 MPH despite the wind and hill. There were lots of crashes and it was pretty clear everybody was willing to go down to get a jersey. I rode like I needed to,less than cordially, but everybody was riding like that and it was the only way to hold position.

Definitely the sketchiest race I had ever ridden and it's really hard to race collegiate without a team. I knew covering moves was futile unless it had Davis and the other big names all in it (Lees-McCrae, Fort Lewis, UVM and/or Marian College-the cycling schools you've never heard of). With two to go I was holding strong trying to avoid the surge when a guy from Marian chopped my wheel hard for no apparent reason but to move up one wheel. I did everything I could to keep it upright but lost a lot of speed and my chances disappeared as I moved back to about 25th or 30th in a split second. Going through with one to go all I could hear was Dave Towle yelling on the PA and the crowd banging on the barricades as I desperately tried to move up. I only had a downhill stretch and headwind stretch to move up and I full on sprinted into the second to last turn going into the hill when the guy in front of me flatted and ended any hope for me. The guy who won the race was a 31 year old undergrad.

I'm hugely frustrated knowing I was there with the best guys but I needed to protect my space a bit better and needed to give myself more of an out per se. I am super motivated for the rest of the year but definitely mad to have collegiate season end like that for me, especially with some friends watching. The crit definitely gave me the confidence that I can ride a super aggressive crit and ride it at the front but am looking forward to the non-collegiate season now. I learned a lot despite the bad luck.

Looking forward to the rest of the year racing with NOW,
Danny (Katz-as opposed to Heeley)