Monday, February 21, 2011

Road Season is Almost Upon Us!

I'm not sure how it happened, exactly, but it did: road season is officially less than 2 weeks away.  With road season almost here, Rutgers is in full prep mode (or panic mode, depending on which member you talk to).  This year, we're hosting our traditional season opener with only 1 race run the same as last year.  It's been a year of change, and we've said goodbye to some members, and hello to a few new racers- from Intro on up- for this coming season. 

The team is in a transitional phase as a lot of the seniors prepare to graduate, and the younger members prepare to step up to take on leadership roles for the team.  It's going to be an interesting shift!  Of course, our younger members are 100% up to the challenge of running the team, maintaining Rutgers Cycling's "punk rock cred," dominating in CX, and running a fantastic road race.

But we still have months before graduation!  In the meantime, new and old racers are preparing mentally and physically for the Rutgers Season Opener in just 2 weeks.  We've been hitting the roads on any clear non-snowy day, and Sunday Centuries are back and more crowded than ever, despite the crazy winter weather that we've been hit with.  And when the snow kept up shut up indoors, we turned to team trainer rides for motivation.

The team has also been hitting the gym for a team training session with an awesome personal trainer who has tailored our workout to make us the best cyclists that we can be.  (I admit, I may have gotten a little miffed when she suggested that I use the "girl weights," but after watching me do more pull ups than most of our guys, she reformed her opinion about me.)

After such a successful cyclocross season, it's going to be hard to top our Fall efforts.  Between the excellent race results, the trip to Nationals, and all the fun non-race moments during cyclocross, it's pretty much going to be impossible to top it, but we'll definitely try to match it with road season this year.  It's a last hurrah for a lot of us, so we're going to make it count!

See you all in a couple of weeks!