Sunday Training Ride

Sunday's training ride at the Bob Rodale Fitness Park was a rampant success, other than the fact that everyone forgot to bring enough clothes... And that on a day that it was supposed to be sunny and warm yet it was snowing.. Pics below, video to come.

New member Dean standing in discontent of the weather

 New team members Pat and Steve "I forgot my pants" F.

 Our chair of international relations and friendly Canadian Alex

 "I forgot my banana"

 The Volkswagons brake lines were "mysteriously" cut... Luckily we had enough bananas to hold the car in place.

 "Look guys I brought my trainer for warming up"

 Brandon showing off his new ride, affectionately called "Dirty Susan"

New Member Info

Congratulations! If you have seen the flyers around campus and they have brought you here, you are one step closer to becoming a member of Lehigh cycling. If you have any specific questions feel free to email our President or Captain:
President: Brandon: blo214@lehigh.edu
Captain: David: dad315@lehigh.edu

The information session is tentatively on Thursday November 8th at 7pm in Hawks Nest. All interested in becoming part of the team must either come to this meeting or email Dave and he will contact you with more info.

First off, you do NOT need a road bike to start off with the team. Winter training will start in November, with spin sessions 1-2 times a week in the spin room of Taylor Gym, for more info on winter training, follow the jump here. This is the perfect time to start getting in shape, and to slowly build a base up to what is needed to win races which start in March. As long as there is no snow on the roads, there will be someone going on rides, and the opportunity to ride in the winter is there. Around February (depending on snow and weather) is when we will start to go outside and work on skills like pace lining, group riding, and race tactics.

The one thing that is important to know is that all of this training is recommended but highly optional. The wonderful thing about the ECCC (Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference) is that it is as serious as you want it to be. The races are categorized by INTROS, D, C, B, and A so whether you want to have a casual race or mash the pedals like Mark Cavendish, you will be accommodated.

Regardless of how hesitant you may or may not be to try cycling. We highly encourage you to come to the first meeting and open spin sessions. Meet the team members, and learn about what the program has to offer before you make up your mind.

"My favorite part of joining Lehigh Cycling was the camaraderie in the team and the sense of accomplishment from racing. I had never raced bikes before and I did not realize how rewarding it was to see all this hard work pay off in the races. Not to mention... The UVM guys are a bunch of rednecks at heart and it is always funny to see what they have in store for the races"- member of Lehigh Cycling

Cyclocross Season Preview

Marten made his CX bike into a fixed gear winter trainer. So now the only way we can celebrate CX season is to drink the fluids of Cyclocross gods! (High quality H20)


Naturally Light, 
Dave

Winter training is coming

The leaves are falling, the air is cooling, it is literally perfect riding weather. Unfortunately as we all know this will not last forever. Pretty soon it will be cold as an eskimo's undercarriage and we will be forced to the confines of the winter spin room. We are excited to have the opportunity to use this as a platform for meeting potential racers and riders therefore the first two sessions will not be so intense. Mainly just intervals and cardio and our spinning games. The Contador paced hill slug sessions will be at a later time.

The games will include.

I hate you. You Suck. My Turn!
-Get in a circle and everyone gets about 8 minutes where they control what everyone does. And you literally can do whatever you want. Painfully easy spin, painfully difficult spin, hill slug fest, make everyone get off the bike and do planks, water break, Wendy's run... whatever

F*$! the fan
-10 minute interval session, when the fan blows by you spin as fast as you can until the fan comes back.... repeat. 5 minutes in you are obliged to proclaim "F the fan" every time the fan comes by you.

Strugglebus
-Do what Marten does for an hour and a half

Paintrain
- TTT simulation, everyone starts off at the same cadence, the first one at the front goes up 2 cranks in resistance and each subsequent person behind him is 1/4 of a crank behind the person in front of them. The person at the front says when his pull is over.

Powerhour
-Easy spin one song, hard spin on the next... repeat until legs loose feeling. *You are required to follow Dave in complaining how the hard songs are always longer than the easy songs*

Grit your teeth and squeeze your cheeks 
*To be done before black mo* Easy spin 10 minutes... 2-3/ 15 minute high intensity hill climb simulations... If you think you might pass out you are doing it correctly.

Movienight
-Marten brings in a corny awesome DVD of cyclists with random sound effects that correspond to pain.. Instructions inside.

Attack
-Hill climb race... The person who attacks the most amount of times wins.... If you want to stay in the race, you have to attack when they do.

And remember!

Lehigh Laps results

Phew, the proverbial rubber dust has settled, and our first track race is in the books.  Thanks to everyone who came out to race for helping to make a successful day of racing and spectating.  If you weren't there, here are some highlights of the day to showcase some of the excitement that is ECCC track racing.

After a thunderstorm blew through our MTB race on Saturday, I was very glad to see temps in the 70s, and low humidity for our track race on Sunday.

Kicking things off in high gear with the 200m TTs, Mark Wagner of Pink Rhino Racing set the fastest time of the day of 12.20 seconds, that's averaging 36.9 mph on a flat track!  Steve Rusnak of Army took the fastest collegiate time at barely a tenth of a second behind in the Men's A/B race.  In a theme that would continue for the day, the collegiate Women and C/D Men saw a very tight battle, Kenneth Dailey (Army) beat Alex Borsuk (PSU) by only 7 hundredths of a second, while the stop watches showed only 0:00.02 difference between Gabby and Victoria (West Point)!

In the Men's C/D 500m TT, Kenneth and Alex switched top spots, with Alex taking the win by less then a second.  Steve Rusnak showed he wasn't only fastest over 200m, but also won the Men's A/B Kilo by a solid gap of over 8 seconds.

The 2k individual pursuit showed just how closely matched the collegiate women were racing.  Here is a chart showing the relative advantage in seconds of Jasmine over Gabriella, finally putting an end to Gabriella's winning streak.

After a very even start, Gabby inched ahead to a maximum lead of almost 1.5 seconds, but in the final laps Jasmine poured it on to take the win by less then 1 second over the 3 minute race.

In the Men's C/D, it was Alex Borsuk (PSU) again, edging out Brandon Knettel (Lehigh) by less then 2 seconds in their 2k pursuit.  This result was good enough to move Brandon into 3rd over all in the omnium, just one point behind Kenneth Dailey who was consistently finishing near the top.

In the Men's C/D 4k Scratch race, Brandon found enough motivation throw down an early attack, and hold off a hard charging Alex Borsuk (PSU) to take the win, and move into second in the overall omnium, but Alex still held a significant lead of 5 points, after 3 events.

With Army fielding the majority of the riders in the Women's scratch race, Antonina Esposto (Marywood University) was forced to chase down the alternating Army attackers, doing a bunch of chase work, and just plain getting outnumbered by the team tactics of Army. 

Sarah Haight took the Scratch race win, bumping her up into 3rd in the omnium.  While Gabby scored 3 more points to increase her lead in the Women's omnium, the Men's A/B race was just getting tighter.  After winning the scratch race, Mike Houghton (Army) took enough points to tie Steve Rusnak for the lead, with Micah not far behind.

With such a close race for the Men's A/B omnium, it came down to a tense and tactical race in the Match Sprints.  Mike Houghton won each of his heats, all the way to meet Steve Rusnak in the finals.  Each were tied for first in the omnium, so this win would determine not only the Match sprints, but the overall collegiate win.  Crawling at a snail's pace (I swear they went backwards for a while) until late in the last lap, Mike got a strong enough acceleration to take the win by several bike lengths over his teammate.

In the Women's match sprints, Jennifer Webster took her first win of the day, facing off against her teammate Sarah in the finals.  While the margins got tighter, neither had quite enough points to take the omnium win from Gabriella Allong.

Results and TT times (with splits) posted on the website.