Road Nationals 2013 - by A. Freund
After a grueling semester of conference racing, at the beginning of May it was time for WCCC's best and brightest to prove themselves in Ogden, Utah, at the 2013 USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals Championships. Our crew left Berkeley early on Wednesday morning and embarked on the twelve-our drive. Many coffee breaks later, we made it to Utah. Thursday was used by most teams to practice the time-trial course and road-race descent.
Friday morning was met with nervous excitement as we prepared for forty-five minutes of torture during the team time trial. The course on Antelope Island featured distractingly picturesque scenery, some gentle rollers, and no shortage of bison. The WCCC dominated the women's podium with UC Davis, Stanford, and UC Berkeley in second, third, and fourth place. Stanford crushed the men's race with a fourth place.
Saturday's T-shaped crit course proved to be too hot to handle for many as crashes plagued both the women's and men's races. Danielle Haulman from UC Davis, the conference individual omnium champion, was the best placed rider from the WCCC in the women's crit with her seventh place, and Bryan Duke from Cal Poly was fifteenth. There were a total of eight WCCC men in the top twenty-six. Teams from across the nation came together that night for USA Cycling's annual banquet, where the fruit punch was flowing and the desserts ran out much too quickly.
The brutal road race took place on Sunday. This course featured a number of relatively flat, high-speed laps before a long, steep, nightmarish climb and a screaming-fast descent to the flat run-up to the finish. Despite being pitted against the acclimated mountain goats of Colorado, the WCCC women did very well on the climb. Katie Hall from UC Berkeley was fourth and Angharad Porteous of Stanford eighth. The WCCC had eight women in the top eighteen. The best placed WCCC men were Keith Wong from Stanford in thirteenth and Duke at fourteenth.
We were totally beat after a weekend of racing the nation's best, but the WCCC was able to head back west with some impressive results. UC Davis made it onto the team omnium podium with their fifth place. Hall, Haulman, and Porteous were sixth, seventh, and tenth in the individual omnium, and Duke was ninth. We had fun, we got to miss school, and we're super proud of our conference.
Friday morning was met with nervous excitement as we prepared for forty-five minutes of torture during the team time trial. The course on Antelope Island featured distractingly picturesque scenery, some gentle rollers, and no shortage of bison. The WCCC dominated the women's podium with UC Davis, Stanford, and UC Berkeley in second, third, and fourth place. Stanford crushed the men's race with a fourth place.
Saturday's T-shaped crit course proved to be too hot to handle for many as crashes plagued both the women's and men's races. Danielle Haulman from UC Davis, the conference individual omnium champion, was the best placed rider from the WCCC in the women's crit with her seventh place, and Bryan Duke from Cal Poly was fifteenth. There were a total of eight WCCC men in the top twenty-six. Teams from across the nation came together that night for USA Cycling's annual banquet, where the fruit punch was flowing and the desserts ran out much too quickly.
The brutal road race took place on Sunday. This course featured a number of relatively flat, high-speed laps before a long, steep, nightmarish climb and a screaming-fast descent to the flat run-up to the finish. Despite being pitted against the acclimated mountain goats of Colorado, the WCCC women did very well on the climb. Katie Hall from UC Berkeley was fourth and Angharad Porteous of Stanford eighth. The WCCC had eight women in the top eighteen. The best placed WCCC men were Keith Wong from Stanford in thirteenth and Duke at fourteenth.
We were totally beat after a weekend of racing the nation's best, but the WCCC was able to head back west with some impressive results. UC Davis made it onto the team omnium podium with their fifth place. Hall, Haulman, and Porteous were sixth, seventh, and tenth in the individual omnium, and Duke was ninth. We had fun, we got to miss school, and we're super proud of our conference.
Comments
Post a Comment