UCSB Cycling Exclusive - Notes from the Road to Nationals
Brought you by UCSB Cycling Team President Eric Hartsuyker, the following is the day one update from the 2011 Collegiate Road Bike Nationals in Milwaukee, USA:
I woke up at 4:45 AM to quickly eat and throw my bags in the car. I picked up Danny Boy, then we grabbed Coach Cody from downtown and hit the road. The drive to LAX was uneventful, and as usual there was a terrible amount of traffic, reaffirming my hatred of LA and the 405.
At the airport, Cody and I opted out of the backscatter machine and were on the receiving end of some rather enthusiastic groping from the TSA. I could make jokes about Amsterdam here, but that's for another venue (it's ok; I'm Dutch). Plane-ride, sleep, layover in Omaha, plane-ride, sleep, Milwaukee.
When we arrived, Danny Boy busted out his laptop to send off an essay, while Cody and I picked up the luggage. After a few minutes of waiting, sure enough, Danny's clothing bag was some thousand miles away from him, and his teammates are laughing. We put in a complaint with the airline, picked up the van, and headed toward Madison.
A few miles down the road, we saw an exit with a sign for Qdoba, and being fat, hungry cyclists, we pulled off. You'd think we'd be able to easily find the place, but after two-miles of driving and nothing turning up, it was time to break out the smart phones. We spent the next 20 minutes driving in circles looking for a restaurant that didn't exist. When we'd given up, we headed back to the freeway, and immediately saw a shopping center called the Qdoba Plaza. We'd driven past it three times. We is dumb. We pulled in, and while in line got a call from the airport saying they'd found Danny's bag. We left, drove back to Milwaukee, picked up the bag, then drove to the hotel. So far, y'all ain't missing out on jack diddly. There are precisely zero two hands up in this state, and we're all tired.
UCSB Cycling Sends Two to Nationals
By Allie Browne
This past weekend, UCSB club cycling competed in the Conference Championships in Hollister and Morgan Hill, with two cyclists qualifying for nationals next week.
The Gauchos have a small A-team, meaning each rider had to qualify individually: third year mathematics major Eric Hartsuyker and fourth year political science major Dan Katz accumulated the required amount of points in races during the past ten weeks. In the 67-mile race at Hollister, Hartsuyker crossed the finish line with the lead group, but Katz crashed out at mile 27 and was taken to the emergency room to remove rocks from his arm and to be stitched up. In the hour-long crit race at Morgan Hill, Hartsuyker was exhausted from the previous day’s race, while Katz won the sprint when four riders were up the road, taking fifth place.
Nationals will be held May 6th-8th in Madison, Wisconsin.
Island View Classic-UCSB Chain Gang Takes Third
Staff Writer
Gaucho tires were among the first to cross the finish line this weekend in the Island View Classic at Research Park, with Men's Road Captain Kelsey Judd placing in multiple races. Judd earned fourth in the Road Race and third in the overall cycling Criterium. But with so many cyclers pedaling for the top three spots, avoiding crashes was victory in itself.
"We got through the race without any problems- usually that’s pretty hard to do," UCSB Club Cycling Captain Erik Hartsuyker said.
After hosting one of the last conference events this season, the team will train hard and skip desserts in preparation for the WCCC Championship and the NCAA Road Championship. Although planning the event has added hours onto a full practice schedule, it hasn’t changed the team’s motivations to keep competing.
"If I stopped having fun, I would stop racing," he said.
To see the official results, check out the event page at http://wccc-info.com/.
UCSB Cycling to Race at Home on Saturday - Another Excuse to Ride Fast
By Jay Gadbois
Staff Writer
There is barely room to pedal. The next tire in the peloton is so close you could grind it. And right behind is another rider just as close. But for the UCSB Club Cycling team, this is actually a prime position.
This Saturday, riders from across the conference, as well as Reno, will squeeze into Research Park, at the Gauchos' only home race of the year. Hundreds of cyclers will race in the close knit pack called the peloton, where slowing down could cost an individual the race.
“People get lapped because you pull out," Cycling Team President Eric Hartsuyker said. "Basically, you drop out of the peloton, you can’t draft and people go way faster than you."
The peloton makes a wind break called draft that accelerates everyone involved, and it is the source of strategy for teams trying to break away or speed up a teammate.
"Some teams have a dedicated sprinter; we have Katz, Leece, and myself on the A team," Hartsukyer said. "So we have Leece as the dedicated runner, and myself and Katz will sacrifice our finishing place to get him a win. Exerting yourself while he sits in the draft."
Riders who exert themselves for a teammate in one race, often earn allies in later races.
“I started the season racing B's," UCSB Men's Road Captain Kelsey Judd said. "I helped Eric win a few road races, and he’d help me win a criterium."
In cycling, much like weight class in wrestling, riders are put into brackets.
“All riders are ranked A-D depending on how they do," Hartsuyker said. "As you do better you move up."
Races take place on a short oval shaped circuit and are called criteriums, or a “crit.” Riders compete over a specified block of time, and officials calculate a final set of laps as the race progresses.
“The pack usually does laps and stays together till the end," Judd said. "So you want to have good position going in to the last lap and before the sprint."
Flat stages and the last lap of the criteriums are where the riders really start to pedal.
"People underestimate how intense and how fast it is," Hartsuyker said. "On flat ground a sprint can exceed 40 miles per hour easily at the end of the race."
If you thought the bike paths were fast, come out the first weekend in April to see the human generated speed, or get on the road yourself. Potential participants can race in heats open to the general public,or begin training with the team during practices.
"A lot of people, when we talk about joining the team, talk about not wanting to come ride with us because they think all our rides are really fast," Hartsuyker said. "But really we’re just kids with a passion for riding bikes. And really this race season, while the goal is to be fast, the team is all about getting from slow to fast- over time. Just grab your bike."
With the team’s biggest local race in Sisquoc and most of the races out of town, this is a chance to see the Gauchos at home - and to see how much biking to class every day for years sets you up to be champions.
"Racing is just another reason to ride your bike fast," he said.
UCSB Cycling Goes To Mountain Bike Nationals
Friday was the first day of racing. Division 1 Women's Cross Country went off at 8am and Division 2 went off at 8:05. UCSB had no women's A's riders competing. Division 1 Men's went off at 12pm and Division 2 went off at 12:05. Before the start, the announcer called up riders from each school to the start line based off of last year's placing and current National and Conference champions. I was in the 2nd wave called to the line. Up until that point, my brain had yet to register the fact that I had been selected to race at the national level with the fastest collegiate riders in the nation. When the announcer said "1 minute to start" it finally fulled clicked, my body unloaded adrenaline, and my pulse started racing.
The race started up a gravel fire road. It was very loose and people were bumping and crashing right off the line. The race format was more or less a straight climb up the mountain, followed by a traverse section with a bit more climbing, and then a very technical singletrack descent. Each loop was just over 6 miles long with over 1100 feet of climbing per lap. I made up a lot of ground on the leaders during the climbs, but generally lost time on the descents. Lap 1 hurt badly because of the pace everyone was driving the pace hard. By lap 2 the field had broken apart more, and I was able to get into a comfortable rhythm on the climbs and pace myself on the descents. Lap 3 was painful to start on the climb. I had been pacing back and forth with Dan Findley from San Diego state. We had a haggard attempt at conversation discussing the general brutality of the climb. I dropped him, but he caught my on the descent again. When we started lap 4, Dan and I were riding beside each other once again. There was the same talk about how much we wanted to die and fall over. When everything was said and done, I placed a minute behind the rider ahead of me, and about 35 seconds ahead of the rider behind me to take 35th.
The Division 1 Cross Country Short Track went off at 10am on Saturday. The field started with 64 riders, and went up the same graveley climb as the cross country. Once again, I was in the second call up wave and third line back from the start. When the whistly blew, it was the typical dead sprint up the hill. The UN Reno rider in front of my was sliding out the whole way up the hill, and I couldn't get around him because of riders swarming on both sides. I lost probably 20 positions in the first 2 minutes. At the top of the climb, the course bottle necked to some very tight single track through the redwoods. Since the field hadn't had time to thin out, we were literally stopped and standing waiting for the riders in front of us to clear out before we could even get through. The descent was a series of tight switchbacks all the way to the bottom. Since each lap took under 4 minutes, riders were pulled out if they were at risk of getting lapped by the leader. Probably 80% of the field was pulled in the first 15 minutes. I lasted just over 10 before my group was pulled. I only took 42nd.
While I was racing, the downhillers were practicing for their events. When I came home, I saw Scott Saxer's Leatt neck brake (something downhillers wear to prevent neck injury) broken in two on his bed. Apparently he took a monster spill on one of his practice runs. I called him to make sure the team hadn't landed it's 3rd broken neck in the last year. He was totally fine and hanging out in the resort's hot tub. Scott, if you didn't want me to say this, sorry man <3. David Herrick qualified in the top 32 for the Division 1 4-Cross downhill event. He had an amazing first round run taking 1st of his group. In his second run, he got last gate selection, and was 4th coming down the course. The riders in 2nd and 3rd wiped out on the inside of a corner, and it looked like David was going to pass them to take second. But, as luck would have it, he ended up piling up with them. His bike was pinned under one of theirs, and he ended up not taking a top 2 spot to move to the next round. His final placing was 13th.
There were no cross county events Sunday, so I slept in to recover from the weekend's racing and cold I'd been developing since Wednesday. I didn't get a chance to watch the Division 1 Downhill, but Ryan Quinn took 13th, David Herrick took 48th, and Scott Saxer took 68th of 80 starters. Hopefully one of them would like to further update everyone.
