SECCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC Championships

So we had the last conference road cycling race of the year this past weekend hosted by Lees McRae College in Banner Elk, NC. It started off with a two hour trailer loading process at a team member's apartment complex. Then we all piled into the van (that said team member's mom rented for us) for the 10+ hour drive. It was 4pm. Yada Yada Yada sleep...eat snacks...try to work on homework...sleep...annoy people that are trying to sleep...and so on for 10 hours. We arrive at hotel at 2:30am and promptly go to bed. The men A's had a team time trial at 9am. I'm glad I'm a B (I think I'm going to try and keep it that way) and could sleep until 11.


Next was the crit from hell. A .5 mile course of which about 1/3 was a steep climb, the other 2/3 of which was muddy downhill with a constant right hand bend. The only good thing was that there weren't any corners. Not to mention it started raining right before my race. The race totally broke up after 2 or 3 laps, and I found myself in a chase group of 5 behind a breakaway of 3 Lees McRae riders. After a little while in this group, I attacked on the uphill and bridged to the front group of 3, only to be dropped on the downhill because I'm a pussy. I road the rest of the race by myself and ended up 9th overall behind 7 Lees McRae riders and an Auburn rider. I'll refrain from saying what I'm feeling at this point.

Sunday was the road race. The course was a 10 mile loop with 1 mile (800 ft.) and 3.5 (1500 ft.) climbs. The first mile or so was pretty flat, followed by the 1 mile climb. The first time up, people totally drilled it, and I dropped about halfway up, thinking I'd save some energy and catch a few riders who would blow up. Well that didn't work. Learned my lesson. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to catch a group of about 7. I finally caught them, sat there for about 10 minutes, when the group all of a sudden broke apart, leaving me and a dude from Clemson alone to chat for the next 1.5 laps. Within the last mile, we agreed to battle it out for the finish, so I attacked him right before the last corner and gloriously road away to 17th place.

The latter 2/3 of the van ride home was pretty much hell for me as well. I began to develop a sore throat around the Charlotte area and by the time we were halfway home I had a fever as well. Trying to study in a van after 6 hours, sick, at 10pm is definitely not fun.

After all the bitching I just did, I will say that all in all, it was a decent race weekend. Team Florida finished 2nd place in the SECCC and is most likely headed to nationals.

This blogging thing is really busting up my grammar confidence.