This year I’ve decided to do some collegiate racing in order to 1) get more racing days on the calendar and 2) to give the ol’ Stars and Bars another go at Collegiate Nationals this coming May in Ogden, Utah.

-1 : there are absolutely no photographers at collegiate races.. so it makes blogging a bit trickier and I’ve had to create my own..

Meet Jeff.

Jeff is a freshman law student at Santa Clara University after having gotten his undergraduate degree at UCDavis, and has now taken it upon himself to become the captain of the SCU cycling team. Now, here’s where it gets interesting: Jeff races in the collegiate Men’s B category, whose road races just so happen to start only 5 minutes before the Women’s As. So, hypothetically, if the Women’s As are cranking along and the Men’s Bs are taking time to smell the roses, a bridge up to the Bs would mean I would acquire 3 SCU teammates .

However, if this happens, Jeff is in a pickle because if he helps his girlfriend, Dani ( a racer for Davis’s Women’s A Team), he’ll get his head cut off for treason…

but if he works for me, he’ll get castrated for working for someone other than his girlfriend.

Thankfully for Jeff, however, the Mens Bs raced an extremely aggressive first lap and thus, Jeff will be able to keep his head and his ballz for one more week. Phew! But who knows what will go down at this upcoming collegiate race weekend in LA.

3^rd reason for racing collegiate : to serve as an ego-booster. And ego-boost it did. Woop Woop! Sunday’s criterium saw a few of us starting the race out hot and dwindling the group down to 7 riders. For the finale, I then busted out my sprinting legs (lol) and won the sprint with a bike throw.

^Unfortunately, the only picture that I’ve found from the race makes it look like I did not win

*REWARD* for any photos that show that I actually won the race as I need  as much proof as I can get. But for those skeptics out there, here ya go:

Nonetheless, I know it was only a collegiate race and it’s only the beginning of February and people aren’t on top form yet so dontcha worry, I won’t let it get to my head or anything.

4^th reason for racing collegiate: to have fun. I don’t know how many times former-collegiate racers have told me that I “just have to” race collegiate and now I know why. It’s road racing without the stodginess of regular USAC road racing. We’re all just early 20-somethings lookin’ to have a good time and race some bikes.

It may look just like normal racing…

but really, this is what’s going on here:

There ya have it, 4 reasons for racing collegiate.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog in which I divulge this upcoming weekend’s trip to LA (first time!)

Disclaimer to future employers and grad schools – I’m not crazy, I’m just creative!