2004 Trekbikes.com NCCA National Road Championships presented by TIAA-CREF

May 21st-23rd, 2004
By Isaac Dancy
Madison, WI

The Players -

• Kieran Culligan
• Caitlin Bever
• Jason Sears
• Jenna Blake
• Ariel Herrmann
• Isaac Dancy
• some lady dressed in a cow suit marking the TTT turnaround

May 19 - Flying out to Wisconsin was pretty good all things considered -- ie, things were as good as they could be considering we were flying TO Wisconsin. Jason chatted it up with some Wisc-y chick on the plane, Jenna read 2 issues of "Modern Bride" and Ariel's seat was taken by some dude who never bothered to look at his seat assignment. Isaac decided to carbo-load once Jason revealed the new uber-large Shrek peanut M&Ms. Kieran wasn't allowed on the Madison flight because his luggage was supposedly not on the plane. We arrived in Madison, and -- surprise -- out comes Kieran's luggage and the rest of us have to carry all his worldly possessions to the hotel while he loafs around Chicago. We arrive at the hotel and secretly sleep 6 to a room. Ah, we certainly are college students.

May 20 - Kieran and Isaac decide to show how macho they are by riding out to the road race course, previewing the course and riding back ... 60 miles roundtrip that they covered in less than 3 hours thanks to Kieran's ridiculous ability to plow into the wind in his 53x13. Seeing the hills on the course promptly made Kieran lose his appetite while Isaac thought about how convenient it would be that our race is in the afternoon so he can get some more training in. Ariel wasn't sure what to do then decided to chase the first two about 30 minutes later. Jenna, Jason and Caitlin took the more sensible route, renting a car and driving to the course and riding it.

Afterward the TTT men drove out to Waterloo to preview the TTT course. With Jason successfully missing every turn on the course -- can you say 3-point turn? twice? three times? four times? -- Kieran and Isaac mused about the turnaround location taking place on the narrowest part of the course while Ariel argued whether or not we should drive past the Princeton riders thus "revealing ourselves".

May 21 - TIAA-Cref Criterium Ariel represented the team in the open event since we had only 3 spots for the D2 race. Ariel sat in on the easy pace and attacked on a few occasions to get the good ole proverbial shout out from ECCC-biased race announce Mark Abramson. Did anyone know Ariel was also a med student at Harvard and had proven that pi was actually a rational number? Neither did we but over the PA it went.

Caitlin went for an easy ride -- oops, sorry ... meant to say Caitlin did the D2 Women's criterium. And it wasn't easy, but Caitlin sure looked slick, smooth and hunky-doory during the whole thing. She settled into the front group quite nicely to take 12th at the finish! They were giving away Power-Taps for the winner of the first preme, and dispite Jason promising to give her a back rub for every 2 hours he would use the Power-Tap (this offer included a preview by the way ... Stan, be jealous, be very jealous), Caitlin decided it would be better to finish the race than bomb it for the first preme.

Jenna competed in the D1 Women's race shortly after. Jenna did a good ride, spaggling with the front group to take 22nd at the line.

Now the fun part. Kieran, Jason and Isaac started the D2 Men's crit only to have it suspended for 2.5 hours when a ridiculous storm came rolling through. Kieran and Isaac prepared for the restart by huddling in a bus stop overhang while some others decided to go shopping at Urban Outfitters. After a series of delays, the D2 crit was finally back on at 6:30pm for a nice, easy 30 minute race. With no warmup Kieran and Isaac were off the back and spaggling faster than it takes Keith to puke up Zony's chewy cytomax. Kieran and Isaac were pulled after 15 minutes, but the grinning Jason Sears stuck it out after his good start to hang on for 24th!

May 22 - Qdoba Road Race Isaac and Jenna got an early start on the day when Jenna set her alarm at 5am without realizing that it was still set on eastern standard time. Awesome! And did I mention it was raining outside? More fun awaits.

Anyway, Jason and Isaac headed out with Caitlin and Jenna to work the feedzone on a nice, dreary, rainy Saturday morning in Black Earth, Wisconsin. A cyclist would be safer riding down Storrow Drive at rush hour than he/she would be racing in the Women's road race fields. The D1 race had a crash in the first mile during the neutral roll-out that put 2 riders in the ambulance, gave another one a concussion and completely destroyed another person's bike. The D2 race was a bit smaller and I hope less sketchy. Caitlin fought off nerves and an asthma attack to capture 22nd in the race! Awesome when you consider that Caitlin had her attack halfway through the race, but still fought on to pass 7 riders in the last lap.

Isaac and Jason rode out to the feedzone, which consisted of riding up a brutal climb (after we were assured that this longer route would go around it) and finished with a 500m stretch of gravel road. The perfect pre-race ride, methinks. Anyway, after successfully feeding Jenna on her 3rd lap, Isaac rode back to the start only to find that Jenna made it there first, after being taken out at 45+ mph by some Stanford rider. Of course, the Stanford rider was able to finish while Jenna could do nothing but hold her rear derailleur in her hand and go search for some Tegaderm.

With that excitement over, the men got ready for their road race. The rallying cry today was "Everyone finishes," which I'm sure was not so appealing to Jason and Kieran after we decided that they would be Ariel's &*%$hes for the first half of the race. Jason and Kieran were awesome, however, taking big risks before the bottom of the climbs to move Ariel as far forward as possible while Isaac sat at the back and admired the views. After more than a few hard efforts, Kieran and Jason were dropped and Isaac and Ariel represented MIT in the peloton while Dartmouth was up the road kicking ass. With the Dartmouth break 10-strong, Ariel and Isaac had a brief meeting going into the last lap which consisted of:

Ariel : "Hey, what should we do?"
Isaac : "How about sit in?"
Ariel : "Sounds good"
Isaac : "Awesome"

While Lees-McRae and some other schools tried fruitlessly to chase back the break, MIT rested up. The final few kilometers of the race were very sketchy, but the main group stuck together with Ariel taking 24th on the line, Isaac taking 36th, Jason grabbing 44th and Kieran sprinting for 53rd. Everyone finishes. 80 miles, about 24 mph average speed.

Kieran won the Endurox Challenge by the way -- which was a pool amongst the MIT racers about who could best predict how long after the race Ariel would mention the word "Endurox." Ariel actually mentioned it before he was off his bike and riding back to our bags, so Kieran's guess of 1 minute makes him the champion.

May 23 - Qdoba Team Time Trial Hosted at the Trek factory in Waterloo, WI, the TTT was the capper on the weekend and what a finish we had!

Kieran and Isaac got a good warmup admiring all the Lance bikes hanging in the lobby while Jason slept and Ariel had everyone on trainers about 2 hours before our start. After warming up for about 30 minutes it was pretty obvious between Kieran, Jason and Isaac that they were all thinking they would be the first one dropped ... considering we needed to finish 3 guys things were not looking so hot.

Our TTT started and things were going well until the halfway mark when Kieran, Isaac and Ariel decided to do a little asphalt quality check at the turnaround. After making a little skinny boy sandwich, MIT was back on the road but without Isaac, who was busy riding to the Shimano guys to get a new wheel. The second half of the race consisted of a totally-blown Kieran hollering "gap" to Jason and Ariel while Isaac exploded after 5 minutes of chasing by himself. MIT was 15th on the line or, should I say, last place.

All the same ... but really, we were 15th by only a few seconds and so without our little pile-up we were definitely capable of a Top Ten. Wait till next year!

May 24 - Traveling home is always the fun part, isn't it? Well, after Jenna sat on the tarmac at O'Hare for 3 hours the previous day, the MIT crew was just happy to land in Boston on time. The day's excitement consisted of the newly-founded contest amongst the men to see who can gain the most weight during this week's rest week ... for those interested Isaac is certainly the front runner after plowing through a Cinnabon, Chicken McNuggets and French Fries in the span of 10 minutes at the terminal in Chicago. At Logan all our bikes arrived and Jason, Caitlin and Isaac took a cab to Fulkerson to access the damage of the last 5 days.

Caitlin's back wheel is out of true thanks to the medieval handy work of the airline baggage handlers, Isaac's rear rim is destroyed and Jenna's bike is looking a little depressed. Kieran is also riding sans rear derailleur and down about $30 after Isaac casually didn't pay him back for some pizza we ordered at the hotel.

What a week! For the curious, Ariel already has worked up some calculations about how we'll do next year taking into account the rotation of the earth, the relative position of the moon and Uranus ... I'll summarize and say it looks like we'll be improving on the team 10th place finish from 2004 !

Good work this year everyone! I had a great time and I hope everyone is motivated to keep working hard, keep finishing, and let's start winning.