Cinder Tracks and Pedal Dancing

Practice Quals. The first time to see what teams are really competitors and what teams have fallen off the bike…literally. Practice Quals is a mix between amazingly fast laps by some of the top teams and agonizingly slow laps by some of the girls teams. Time slots for practice quals were picked during the Quals Meeting (see previous post and stop reading ahead!). Unfortunately Pi Kapps wasn’t very speed to sign up so we were stuck with the time of 10:00pm. While this may seem late to some of you, for the life of a college kid this might as well have been late afternoon. We took the day easy leading up to our practice time, and got our gear together at the house to head over to the track by 9:30. On the way out of the frat, brothers came out to wish us luck and a few of them were committed enough (or just needed an excuse to not study for a bit) to walk over to the track to watch our Qual. I’ve walked onto that track dozens of times now, but walking out for the practice quals was much different. No one was joking or smiling and we barely even said anything to each other besides mentioning a few bits of strategy or tips. Our first rider, Eric Hulse, took the track and began his practice lap before sprinting to the starting line and starting the clock…

Last night we had the always exciting and nerve-wracking Quals Meeting. During this meeting, every team that’s attempting to compete in Little 5 shows up and draws for their Qual time. Being a rookie, I really didn’t understand much about the process or when would be a good time to go, but here’s what I found out. Quals takes place between 8am and 6pm and teams go on 5 minute intervals. In that time, the track gets re-rolled twice at 11:10am and 2:10pm. Obviously a clean track is ideal, so you want to go as close to those times as possible. Unfortunately the selection process for time slots is completely random and therefore somewhat frightening. The top 3 teams (men and women) from the Fall Cycling Series get to pick their times first, and from there the real process begins. Teams are drawn at random and then a team member picks a piece of paper out of a box. On the piece of paper is your qual time. This year’s meeting had a great start for most teams because the fraternity Fiji went first and picked the always hilarious 8am slot. We picked 3:45 pm. It’s an interesting position. On one hand we have to wait around all day, but on the plus side we’ll have a great idea of what our time will have to be in order to qualify. 6 months of work boiled down to less than 3 minutes of excruciating pain just so that you can put yourself through 50 miles of even worse pain…ah Quals…

“JANK!!! QUAL QUAL QUAL QUAL!! WERE TAKING SHOTS AND I PUKED IN THE ATLANTIC!!” This is just one example of the probably twenty drunken texts I got from my pledge brothers who were partying in Fort Lauderdale over Spring Break. While they were drinking the day away, the bike team was hard at work in Bloomington. The decision to stay was a tough one, but looking back on the week that was, it was the right decision. A typical day for us went something like this:

9:00am - Wake up. Snooze alarm clock.

10:00am - Wake up. Snooze alarm clock.

10:30am - Wake up. Resist urge to snooze alarm clock and get some breakfast with the rest of the team.

11:00am - Track opens and we start to collect our gear to head over.

11:15am - Still trying to find those damn sunglasses…

11:20am - Found um! And we’re off to the track!

11:30am - Roll up to the track in a mix of street clothes and bike gear that always seems to mystify some of the other bikers. The majority of these guys seem to take their gear (and safety) too seriously, because they’re always showing up to the track with their helmets, sunglasses, gloves, shorts and jerseys already on…and they’re still in their cars!!

11:35am - Do our warm ups and start the days exercises

12:00pm - Biker tan lines are firmly setting in.

12:30pm - Finish up whatever it is we were supposed to be doing on the track and start to work on our exchanges

1:00pm - We become convinced that we can beat Cutters and head home.

1:20pm - Lunch and hydrate

3:00pm - Wake up. Snooze alarm.

3:30pm - Wake up and start to re-gear up for a road ride.

4:00pm-6:00pm - RideRideRideRideRideRideRide

6:30pm - Shower and get ready for a crazy night!

7:30pm - Wake up. Snooze alarm.

8:00pm - Wake up and eat dinner. From there we changed it up every night! Some nights it was a movie, other times we met up with sorority bike teams and had dinner or just hung out.

Yes, the life of a cyclist is glamorous, but all the hard work has paid off. Going into Spring Break, our best lap times were around 35 seconds. As of now, the best lap time on our team is 33.5 and then 33.7 seconds. Quals is comin up, and we’re hoping to put in a time of around 2:25. Let’s Ride!