From pvv@cs.washington.edu Wed Apr 29 13:16:09 1998 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.05) with ESMTP id NAA33110 for ; Wed, 29 Apr 1998 13:16:07 -0700 Received: from derkins.cs.washington.edu (derkins.cs.washington.edu [128.95.2.106]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.09) with ESMTP id NAA27077 for ; Wed, 29 Apr 1998 13:16:06 -0700 Received: from derkins.cs.washington.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by derkins.cs.washington.edu (8.8.5+CS/7.2ws+) with ESMTP id NAA08644 for ; Wed, 29 Apr 1998 13:16:06 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199804292016.NAA08644@derkins.cs.washington.edu> To: uwracing@u.washington.edu Subject: Conference Championship Weekend Summary... Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 13:16:06 PDT From: Peter VanVleet Congratulations to everyone on the team! We have once again taken the Conference Championship and qualified for Nationals. You guys did a great job this weekend and throughout the entire season! Actually, does any of the really old people out there know how many years in a row UW has taken the conference championship? The official results and final standings can be found at: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~tongcoec/Conference/ Accommodations for the weekend were provided by the COCC gymnasium, which admittedly weren't as bad as my initial fears. However, we all slept on the wrestling mats, which were a just a tad firmer than I was used to. I actually had a dream that I found some place comfortable to sleep. The gym also provided a climbing wall and peg board, which gave us cyclists the chance to show off our upper body strength. Actually three of us (Paul, Scott and myself) were able to do the peg board. But to paraphrase Randy, "This something a cyclist should *not* be able to do. Next year when we're here, I don't want any of you to be able to do this!" The first race of the day was the TTT, just over nine miles on rolling hills over rough pavement. UW actually field three teams and there were also teams from UO, SCCC for 8 teams total. I can tell that my scathing remarks from my WSU summary had a huge impact. :) The TTT was a bit of damage control. We did not have a women's team, as Laura was our only woman. And our men's team was not up to full strength. Randy was tired from Williamette and Laura was standing in for Richard, who was driving out to Bend that morning. Because UO was fielding a women's squad, OU would mostly likely win the event overall regardless of the "mens" performance. With that in mind our goal was to have a smooth run. However, that was made difficult by the rolling hills. However, we were surprised to find out the OU only beat us by 8 secs. Man we were slow. :) The rest of the squads had decent runs, except for David "I'll be there in 5 secs" Sarruf, who opted to do an ITT when he showed up to the line late and spent the next 20 odd minutes chasing down the rest of his TTT squad. We got 2nd place overall as a team in the TTT, which was just what we needed to maintain our heathly lead over UO. The crit was on campus, through a maze of parking lots and minor roadways. The coarse was actually pretty fun, with no right hand corners, one uphill hairpin turn and big descent down to the finish line. The hairpin corner provided a source of amusement for spectators as almost every lap was guaranteed to have someone dig their pedal into the pavement (at least in the B's race :) ). The Men's B/Women's race broke up pretty quickly. Laura displayed her power by single handedly lapping the B field in the crit. She then displayed her killer instinct when she said "I felt really bad about dropping Dave (Lawson of WSU)". Unfortunately, she had given Dave enough of a lead that he was able to win the Men's B race. But UW dominated the race, taking 2,3,4,6,7,8! The Men's A team also raced well. The pace was pretty feverish from the beginning and a break formed with 2 OU and 2 UW (Paul and Randy). Once the break was established, they intelligently refused to lap the field and gobbled up the prime points while riding the rest of the race in a comfortable pace line. Meanwhile back in the pack, 2 OU and 2 UW (Richard and myself) spent sometime blocking and the rest of the time watching a few people, desperate to get enough independent points to qualify for nationals, take some monster pulls in vain attempts to catch the break. While a little weak in sprinting, the Men's A finished strongly with the 2,4,6,7 placings. This gave us enough points to take the crit overall as a team in convincing fashion, padding our lead over OU. It was once again evident that the men's A squad are just a bunch of flat power riders. The course's hills (which were nothing like Madronna) broke up the race on the second lap. We only managed to finish three riders (Richard, Paul, David) 8th, 9th and 10th. All I can say is more hill intervals up Cougar next winter!! The Men's B and Laura dominated the B race. Tony "the tiger" Korolis soloed for the last lap, winning the race in convincing fashion. Laura got second overall in the B's (oh yeah, she won the women's race). Scott Connor and Patrick finished second, third and fourth. Despite the Men's A relatively poor showing in the road race, the team had enough of a lead to comfortably take both the National Qualifier and the Conference Championship. Special Acknowledgements should be made to Paul and Richard who finished 2nd and 4th overall in the men's A individual omnium. Laura who easily took the women's omnium. And Tony, Pat and Conner who took the top three spots in the men's B omnium (followed closely behind by Scott 5th and Anthony 6th). Rusty "Lighter than air" Beall from OU easily took the overall men's A omnium as well as most of the races this year. And if we can't beat him, we can only hope that he does actually get accepted to UW next year. And finally, I think the quote of the trip belongs to Tony, who remarked "You bastard!" several times while sticking his head out the window, trying to examine what had happened to his bike after I inadvertently used it to prune a few shrubs while driving the van home. Fortunately, no damage was done. Peter .