Results for Army weekend:

          Team Time Trial
      Men's D (10 starters)
           6th Drexel (I forget which trial team had who)
           7th Drexel

          Road Race
      Men's B (57 starters)
           15th Erik da Silva
           dq Joe Kopena (yellow line violation)
           dnf Justin Kline (mechanical, wheel vibration)
     
      Men's C (54 starters)
           26th Chris Hair
     
      Men's D (70 starters)
           39th Steven Place
           42nd Doug Markgraf
           43rd Mike Ondik
           47th Brian Muka
           53rd Dan Moyer
           55th Mike Powers
           dnf Steve Bronstein


          Hill Climb
      Men's B (38 starters)
           8th Joe Kopena
     
      Men's C (43 starters)
           26th Chris Hair
     
      Men's D (46 starters)
           28th Mike Ondik


          Criterium
      Men's B (47 starters)
           11th Joe Kopena
           30th Justin Kline (mechanical, broken cable)
           37th Erik da Silva (crash holdup, 1 sprint pt)
     
      Men's C (55 starters)
           16th Chris Hair (3 sprint pts)
     
      Men's D (31 starters)
           10th Dan Moyer
           19th Steve Place
           20th Brian Muka (crash)
           23rd Doug Markgraf
           24th Steve Bronstein
           26th Mike Powers
           28th Mike Ondik


     Let me say off the bat that although I may have been DQ'd, Chris Hair remains our resident yellow line violator, and that's team gospel.

     However, as you've probably all picked up, this weekend was the unveiling of my new ride, an all carbon Specialized. Given that I failed to win the race, getting DQ'd was probably the most spectacular way short of a crash to inaugurate the beast.

     Seriously though, it was pretty aggravating. I wouldn't have noticed until Sunday, but I was worried I wouldn't get placed because I had no frame number on so I went and checked the results right after the race. I figured I was ~10--12 but I'm looking down the list, and looking, and still looking, and finally I see me all the way at the bottom DQ'd along with a bunch of other guys! The officials said each of has had been warned during the race but continued to violate the yellow line and were DQ'd. That clearly wasn't true, I was never approached during the race. The officials seemed pretty clueless as to why we were DQ'd, the story/locations/etc kept shifting and it was pretty frustrating, but ultimately you can't fight the law.

     Even before that, the road race was sort of frustrating. Cutes dropped out early after getting a bad shimmy in his front wheel on the long Army descent. Then none of the climbers were really willing to move together and leave the main group behind, so it mostly came down to this stupid bunch sprint at the end. It was pretty funny on the last lap when Erik came forward (I hadn't seen him for a while). The two halves of my brain simultaneously thought "Awesome, Erik's here!" and "Damn it, Erik's here, all the sprinters are still here!"

     Interestingly, in reality Erik's not really a sprinter and I'm not really a climber. We're probably both more all-around riders, with maybe slight specializations (E: pack riding/corners; me: hills/endurance). A number of the more pure sprinters weren't there at the finish with E on Saturday, while a number of guys who beat me in the hill climb weren't there with me at the end of the crit.

     The crit was at least interesting. Erik got stuck behind a crash. Like a lot a people, he was riding the fast outside line and someone slipped out on the last lap. I'd been riding the tight inside, which took more energy but ultimately worked out safer.

     However, Justin gets major points (and got a whole lot of attention over the PA system) for doing the essentially perfectly flat, fast crit entirely in his small chainring after his derailleur cable snapped. I didn't get the whole story, but for the record this is believed to have been caused by Steve B dropping the bike before the race and Justin not noticing until the first lap (which the three of us pretty much spent trolling around arguing as to whether or not he could get a free lap for it; in the end he did but couldn't do much about it).

     Ondik also gets points for being the only one to do all four races. The B TTT team got lazy, figured we'd probably miss the start time anyway, and didn't even sign up, so Ondik beat me on that count. Chris also gets points for being the only other one besides O & I to do the Hill Climb. He apparently still had the energy to put in a really solid looking crit, taking a few sprint points and hanging in the front of the group the whole time.

     Doug also gets points, not sure of what kind, for crashing in the TTT. I still have not figured out from the accounts how that happenned.

     The D guys all did great in the road race, placing well on the hilly course. That is, of course, for Bronstein, who wussed out after a lap (no slack for slackers!). However, we'll let him slide as he put in a really solid effort in the crit, hanging in there a long while on a pretty tough course and continually tacking back onto the group just as he was about to slip. I chalk this up to Erik's new motivational tactics, yelling things like "Hurry up and pedal you idiot!!!" This was of course after we'd been telling the D crew before the race that their goal was to beat Muka and Muka's was to beat everybody else. As you can see, our coaching skills are coming along nicely.

     Armed with such motivational material as that, Justin, E, and I all hurt ourselves screaming at the guys. The Army crit is great spectating because you can see the whole course from any point, yet it's still an interesting one with a slight bump/descent and several tight corners. All the guys really put in a good show. Mike Powers held in there suprisingly well for his first crit on a not particularly friendly course. Doug even managed to keep it upright this time. Muka was taken down, but tucked back in after a free lap and ran a decent race. It was just unfortunate because he was looking really strong but after the crash couldn't shift, which made him slip out of the lead group. Steve Place looked strong leading up the second group, and was great to watch as he led a couple charges over the little hill. Big points goes to Dan for quietly sitting in the small second group then charging from way back on the back stretch to win that bunch's sprint and break into the top ten.

     It's been an interesting couple of weekends. Fielding 11 racers is certainly quite a change from a few years back when it was just the Iceman and I. We camped out this weekend, and really lucked out weather wise, temperatures and skies being nice enough that most of us slept under the stars (feels so good). Dodd and Emmy joined us on Saturday, along with Simon, which meant he also got to see the unveiling of the new bike. I remember when he got his current bike three years ago, and those Ksyriums he had that he couldn't use in crits because they'd flex in every corner.

     On a final note, as this weekend showed, there's a lot more to the Drexel Cycling experience than just bikes. A large part of that is camping, which includes things like packing up all your food and gear. One of the more amusing parts of the weekend occurred while Justin, Beth, Chris, Erik, and I were waiting for the D guys to finish the time trial. A bunch of well trained paramilitary deer successfully engaged a combined diversion/stealth attack, with two distracting us at one picnic table while more snuck up behind the campsite. We of course did our best to stop them from eating the D guys' food, which had been left out open and sprawled all over a picnic table, but they were pretty much unstoppable. And by unstoppable I mean Justin started waving the peanut butter around to lead them to it, Erik almost fell off the roof of the car trying to film it, and I almost choked trying not to laugh too hard and scare them away.

     As far as I can tell, we're clearly the best coaches in the ECCC.