Penn State Weekend Recap

The team set out this weekend to Happy Valley for Penn State's race weekend.  Eight members of the Lehigh Cycling squad headed across the state for another great showing by the team.  Week 5 of the ECCC season featured arguably the two most challenging courses of the entire year.  Saturday featured the storied/dreaded (at least for those of us who do not resemble mountain goats) Black Moshannon road race, a 21.5 mile long monster of a course that many of us conquered at last year's Easterns.  With a 1000 foot descent just a few miles into the race, followed by a pair of Cat 4 climbs, and ending with a Cat 2 climb of 1200 feet in 3.7 miles, many riders were pushed to their limits.

Some happy Lehigh Cycling riders at Penn State's Black Mo race.

Starting off the day for the club were Dave and Tom in the D race, racing 1 lap around the grueling course.  The division 2 field was packed as usual, with 41 riders.  Our two riders got a good starting position in the staging area, which would foreshadow their finishing positions as well.  After a podium finish in the D2 race at last year's Black Mo road race by then-freshman Brandon O., this year's freshman phenom Dave exhibited his climbing prowess to decimate the field to come in 3rd place with a blistering fast time of 1:15:21.  After several great performances this season, he's moving on to C's and looking to show his skills.  Tom, usually a mountain rider, followed up on his top 10 finish at the Jersey Devil with a strong 10th place performance over a bunch of roadies.

Dave (back) and Tom (front) at the start of the D2 race.

Just after our guys in the D field went off, Kiki and Molly headed out for their twenty-one and a half miles of fun and pain in the C race.  Fresh off of an awesome eighth place finish in Jersey, Molly was looking for yet another great finish. Despite having a tree fall on her head this past week on a Mountaintop run, she impressively was ready to race on Saturday morning. Seriously, how many of us would show up smiling and ready to race a few days after having that happen?  Reminiscent of a great race at last year's Black Mo race,  Molly flew to a 5th place finish, picking up points and shaving 12 minutes off her time from last year.  Kiki also rode very well, finishing in 19th and finishing 8 minutes ahead of her finish last year at Penn State.

Molly's gonna drop you!!

Kiki looking very happy and like a pro at the start of the C race.

About an hour later, Perry went out for a challenging lap in the Men's Intro race.  Unfortunately, this writer was off in the B race and doesn't know how his race went. Hopefully he had a good time out on the course.  This is one incredibly difficult course, even for the A's, and it's awesome to see that some of the intro riders were brave and strong enough to take on Black Mo.

Out next was our club's lone A rider, Marten.  Last year, he sprinted to a 3rd place finish in the Men's B race at Penn State after dropping almost the entire 55-rider B field on the nasty switchback section of the climb on the first time up the Cat 2 climb.  His race required the best riders in the ECCC to make 3 ascents up Black Mo, which proved to obliterate the entire field and resulted in individuals and groups no larger than four crossing the line every few minutes.  Once again, Marten placed well in the challenging A field, finishing in 22nd of 52.

Marten at the finish of 3 laps of pain in the A race.

Just after the A riders started, Brandon and Eric headed out with the B field.  Following some reckless descending and blatant disregard of the yellow line rule by Eric, the two Lehigh riders led the pack up the first couple climbs and most of the first lap until the killer 1.7 mile section of the long climb.  Attacks were launched by a handful of very strong riders and climbers that just remained out of reach for Brandon. A couple hundred meters down the climb, Eric pedaled his way up the foggy ascent, but was unable to move up to his teammate's chase group.  He picked up a UDel rider, who he rode with for the rest of the race.  Consistently fast and strong as ever, Brandon worked his way to 10th place, yet another one of his six top-10 finishes in as many races.  Despite coerced pulls of excessive effort in a hopeless attempt to catch riders a mile and more up the road, Eric and his race partner made up no ground.  In an amusing half mile sprint for 15th and a meager 2 points, Eric edged out the other rider by a bike length.

From the team's two B riders and Dave's podium placement in D, we picked up a few more team points in the Men's road race.

Dave is on to C!

Brandon and Eric were the only two riders who stuck around for the crit on Sunday.  The course included 6 turns, and featured a very technical chicane (quick left-right sequence) on a narrow alleyway which caused every field to become strung-out single file.  Starting position was of utmost importance just to finish the race.  Most races saw half of their fields pulled and placed, with some races whittled down to just 10 riders.

Brandon was able to move up towards the front early on, where he would remain for the entire race.  Leading the pack through several laps, Brandon picked up sprint points on the third and fourth prime laps.  He found himself with a small group of the top B riders ahead of those remaining in the 19 man pack.  Although they could have put the race away, others refused to do significant work.  Still, Brandon was in the mix at the end, as usual and picked up 11th.   Just like the earlier races, most of the B field was pulled, with only 21 of the initial 44 riders finishing.  Eric got stuck far back at the start, and was unable to bridge to the front group after several riders slammed on the brakes through turns and eased up on the straightaway.  He was pulled and placed, but was able to grab the camera and get some good photos.

Brandon powering through turn 4 in the chicane.

Brandon up at the front again into turn 1.

 All in all, a terrific weekend for Lehigh Cycling in Happy Valley!