From sarvis@u.washington.edu Fri May 25 09:24:40 2001 Received: from jason03.u.washington.edu (jason03.u.washington.edu [140.142.8.11]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f4PGOd0100080 for ; Fri, 25 May 2001 09:24:39 -0700 Received: from dante16.u.washington.edu (sarvis@dante16.u.washington.edu [140.142.15.85]) by jason03.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f4PGOcu25946 for ; Fri, 25 May 2001 09:24:38 -0700 Received: from localhost (sarvis@localhost) by dante16.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f4PGObU102476 for ; Fri, 25 May 2001 09:24:37 -0700 Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 09:24:37 -0700 (PDT) From: jeremy m breach To: Subject: More Nationals! Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Oh, yes! That crit was the hardest physical feat that I have ever put my body through, and I wasn't even in the lead group! (Dirty little secret: I barely even pulled!) Saturday- Yes, as iJim"Master of the Black Stool" Berres and I went to preview the road course with Clarrisss"Logistification" Dirks' boyfriend, Don, it started raining. Lightly. I thought that this was very good, and I shared this with Jim and Don as we drove out to the course. I figure that we are from Seattle and therefore know rain riding a little better than most of the other competitors. And this turned out to be true, too, except that, as I began to express joy at the prospect of a wet course, the intensity of the precipitation multiplied (one hundred-fold!) We arrived at the road course to see many collegiate riders slogging around in the downpour, miserably. We decided not to leave the car, instead opting to drive the course. As we drive, the rain picks up, and picks up! I begin to wonder about the UW women, whose race begins in about an hour. As we drive back towards downtown Colorado Springs, where the crit was held, there is over an inch of water covering much of the road. The women go for it just before we get there, experiencing several crashes and harrowing close calls. A wet race indeed. It begins to dry up for the Men's racing and Mark Legg, the Kiwi from Montana state that dominated the NW omnium took 1st in the Division II race. A dirty race indeed. Then it is our turn. With a rushed, staging-area game of rock-paper-scissors, it was decided that Jim would be first in in line to represent UW. (the organisers planned to call forward one rider from each school, repeating through schools in order, until all riders were at the start line) But did that work? Hells No! Everybody charged the line, pushing everybody, jamming bikes, and raising already eleveted heart rates. Three or four poor fools who ended up in front of me were so rattled that they couldn't even clip in when the startgun was fired. (Jackasses) Immediatly there was a gap between me and Jim,"Lord of the Dark Shit", who actually managed to wrangle his skinny ass up to the front and get into the lead group, where there were not many other skinny asses, just big, big butts and I cannot lie. I was stuck in a chase group whith people from New mexico, Arkansass, and Texas, who did not know how to corner in wet conditions. even though I decided that we would never catch on, and that working too hard was futile and wasteful, I still coasted by these fools in many of the corners. Soon we began passing scattered, wartorn individuals who had been shelled from the lead (Including damien shmidt, the OSU sandbagger) Then came Jim. Jim was the only person who we passed that managed to get back into our paceline. I was very impressed by this. Most others simply faded away into oblivion to be called off the course as they were lapped. then it was our turn. After twenty-five minutes, the UW men were called from the race, lungs on fire, souls bruised but not scarred. That night, a couple of us were coughing up weird things, products of putting our lugs through such a dry, oxygen-deficient, catastophe. I gotta go to class. Maybe I will write about the RR in a bit, if anybody reads this stuff. -J .