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…