Recent Reports may be Substantiated

It is often said that everything is bigger in Texas. For Contador this may be more true than for the rest of us... For years reports from the 2009 TDF competitors and teammates have been the same. Recently photo evidence may clarify things for all parties involved.

New TT kits 2010

This year Temple Cycling has decided to become more patriotic in their quest for the coveted ECCC leaders jersey. It is no secret that Temple will be a power house this year. USA Cycling has already pronounced them a "Major force" on Twitter. "We only need to ride as well as we'll look" -Tyler Bauer

Eat your heart out David Zabriskie.

Off Season coming to an end...

Philadelphia can be a hard place to ride during the winter. Granted none of the ECCC teams have great year round riding. Those Collegiate Teams based in Philadelphia have it comparably better off. But none the less temperatures lately have been consistently below 30 degrees and with the shorter day light hours many riders choose to spend the off season on indoor trainers.

Our sponsor Breakaway Bikes for the second year is offering Collegiate trainer classes utilizing their many Computrainer systems. Members of the Temple University Cycling Team take full advantage of these classes. Nick Rodgers can be seen getting ready for such a class in the adjacent photo.

This past weekend Breakaway Bikes in Philadelphia held it’s first annual Tour de Breakaway, a 120km indoor stage race. Congratulations to Charles Zamastil for his second place finish.

We will chest-bump each of you when we return...

After a small (Charlie) showing at Army, we plan on a more impressive showing for Yale (none). Sorry if you were counting on us for... well... nothing. Its sorta hard to race up yonder when we are slowly sun burning here.





At ease,
Jay

Sorta like unplugging your Computrainer in mid-race...

Simply posting again to throw us at the front of the blogs on the ECCC Blogosphere. It is almost like we are doping. Please read the fresh post below that I posted today but for some reason is labeled for being posted on Sunday...

Jay

A Weekend of Mixed Results

Hello World,

Let's first start off by saying I had hoped this weekend to be the smoothest, easiest race weekend due to the fact I could have walked there as well as other benefits.

Because of this, I offered to house some students from other teams.

Timmy M gave us four racers from Brown, whom we had affectionately called "The Brown Nosers" in the days leading to our first meeting. Tyler and I had both hoped we would house Graham, the distinctive Brown racer from New Zealand who could shed some light on mustache-growing pointers.

When they had arrived, I met Joey, the assuming leader of the bunch. He had explained that we were only to house three of them, since Graham had mistakenly caught his hand/arm/neck into his bladed spokes in the Delaware road race the previous weekend. Then, we also learned that he wasn't a kiwi; I am still wondering how that rumor spread...

Along with Graham (whom I still have never met), I had somehow created a weird name or some sort of descriptive backstory for each of these Brownies. When I was given Joe's number, I put it into my cell phone as "Joe Brown", unknowing at the moment of the strange relation to the celebrity television star of anyone who has to apply for those TV converter coupons (still have to buy that thing). After they had settled into our quaint row home, we rode and met up with everyone and their mother on a bicycle, introducing this character as Joe Brown and eventually simply Judge Joe Brown. I think eventually, the other two of our trio called him that, too, once or twice...

Then, we met the other two: Josh and Cici. They both seemed exhausted and very confused as to my nature of organization. They were quite impressed by many things: our extremely tight and dangerous spiral staircase, mass quantities of cereal, milk, eggs, pancake mix, peanut butter, bread, and more eggs. Luckily, they didn't notice the 6 pounds of venison I had stashed in the freezer. Anyway, Josh seemed to have a nack for not keeping the rubber side down. He had some gnarly-looking road rash from the previous week, and his bike wasn't so healthy either. As I was marshaling the Circuit Race, he had ridden past me in frustration, yelling something incoherent with a loud F-word in it. Assuming that couldn't be good, I figured he crashed. Some hours later, I had found out that he later went to the hospital (Temple Hospital, I might add) for road rash. The rash from the crash was fine, but the previous damage had become infected and led to a fun-filled round of debriding. Apparently, he was also stranded there without a ride home and had another patient offer him fare for a cab (which is something I have never ever heard of happening in North Philadelphia. You thought Will Smith had it bad in West...). I was about to insert an instrument used for debriding here, but after paging through google, I will let you do the exploring...

Then there was Cici. I am sure I spelled his name wrong, but I am rolling with it. An apparent new member to the Browns (not of the Clevland variety), Cici was da man. When we went out to eat on Friday, I asked him how his gnocci was. All he could squeeze out of his mouth through his food was "SO BIG!" He was consistent in his eating abilities, also. Coming home from a pasta fiesta Saturday night, I found an empty box of Dunkin' Donuts doughnuts that had originally was home to 6 lively creatures. I asked The Judge about it, and he said CiCi ate them all. Cici's rebuttal claim was that he only had 5 and a half, but who's counting? Anyway, Cici was also a very nice dude who streamed by me in every lap of the Intro Crit with snot hanging all over him. He was truly laying the pain on thick for his field.

In all, the three he had hosted were a great bunch. Though they didn't buy an overpriced sandwich called a cheesesteak (pfft), they did get a warm ripping-off by a local automechanic for the service rendered to their child-rapist-looking van. It looked something like this:

Apparently, one of the wheels almost fell off, totaling a $500 bill.


In other news, there seems to be some other addressing issues:

1. Roy Bahns- After one of the last pairs breaking on my face on Saturday and the very last pair being thrown from my face during the TTT, they will be sadly remembered until I can get some more. In the meantime, you may not see this sight for a few weeks:



2. Eating- Some of us should really need to stop inhaling at the same time. Note pictures of Tyler with spaghetti and Aquaman Wes with a double-decker slice of pizza. Photos courtesy of John Hunter, who has been begging me for access to the blog site:





3. MIT- Sorry about the space discrepancy. We ended up missing a black fluid trainer if you ended up with an extra one. Please let me know.




This puppy sure tailed off suddenly due to other distractions. Until next time...
Jay G.

Will this happen on Sunday?

You can assume what happens next here. With four or five squirrel-like critters able to ride the Men's A TTT, we are still working out who wants to do it. I've just realized at this moment that all of us have never ridden together at the same time, and we won't be able to until Sunday. Fun...

On our lineup for the showdown is John Hunter, the married man with AARP on his side; Charlie Zamastil, who hasn't been on the road much since his recent injury; Tyler Bauer, who doesn't sleep and is working on a sponsorship with JIF for free peanut butter; Wes, who claims he has no time to ride; and myself, who literally has no time to ride. I had to do two rides on Tuesday to get in some sort of mileage.

It will be interesting, as we may also appear with time trial bikes that we have never ridden and 808's with disks in the wet conditions. We are also semi-hosting the Brown team, and I think they are going to wonder (by our living and riding situations) how we are still alive.




That is all for now. See you all tomorrow.

Jay G.

There are Hills in Delaware

I guess Jay has turned over the reins for the team blog to me for this week. I will dutifully embark on my charge and talk about some of the highlights from this past weekend:

1. Roy Bahns Domination: The Roy Bahns made another stellar appearance this weekend. It actually turns out that they might be the key to success. Both Jay and Kaelin racked-up 1^st place finishes while sporting the Roy Bahns. The rest of the team should get themselves a pair of Roy Bahns so they can be part of the success as well. Little does the competition know, the Roy Bahns have the ability to make them blow-up early in the race allowing the wearer to cruise to victory. LONG LIVE THE ROY BAHNS!!!!
2. Absence of Fast Food: We all decided to give our digestive systems a break in our pre-race preparation. While White Castle and McDonalds before races sound like a great idea, and a tasty one, we all were lighter in the saddle and the air around our bikes probably was a bit fresher.
3. New Mascot: Ruby has taken a bit of a break as being the team mascot. I hear she is a little worried about her figure since she hasn’t been able to fit into her old Temple t-shirt. She plans on hitting the gym the next few weeks and laying-off the extra dog treats so she can make a late-season appearance. In her place we had the scary and vicious Luna. She made her presence known and told the competition Temple was a force to be reckoned with. But, for some reason she is still afraid of the open freezer door (seriously, I can’t open the freezer door without her running downstairs, it’s really weird and funny at the same time). If you raced on Sunday, Luna cheered as loudly as she could for you; while angrily barking at every other rider.
4. Tyler’s Glasses: Our own Tyler Bauer decided the Roy Bahns weren’t for him so he decided to go for a Chronicles of Riddick look. Trust me, Tyler is a lot cooler than Vin Diesel and a way better cyclist.
5. Kristin Gavin: Kristin has transferred her ass-kicking ability from the Cyclo-Cross onto the Collegiate Women’s B field. We just have to make sure for future races that she knows where the finish is. That way we can have her claim victory as opposed to 2^nd place because she’s just chatting away with the competition. Maybe she’s just waiting for a sandpit or barrier to appear.
6. Fun in the Feed Zone: In the Men’s A Road Race, the feed zone was a lively place to be. Katie Fry held it down though she was afraid about handing out water-bottles at speed. Luckily she had successful handoffs to John Hunter and Wes. On a lighter note, we almost put a box of peeps in John Hunter’s feedbag. Imagine the carb-boost he would’ve gotten from our little marshmallow friends. Unfortunately, we were worried he might’ve hopped off his bike mid-race and come after one of us. Instead, we ate the whole pack while watching the race. MMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!

In all seriousness, this was a great weekend for Temple Cycling. We scored points in 11 of the 13 races we had racers entered! That is amazing considering how many people we have on the team. We all had a blast and watched some amazing racing. It was the perfect lead-in to the Phyler. Let’s have a great turn-out this weekend and keep reppin’ the ‘T’!

Who is buried at Grant's Tomb?

Actually, both Grant and his wife...


With beautiful weather, an amazing course, and an awesome crew of volunteers, the race seemed to go off without a hitch. We were without a large number of last week's goons, but we still had some people reppin' the T. After the race, I got a chance to hop onto a subway and explore downtown (thanks to the directions of a Columbia marshal the Nigerian subway attendant!).

I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but everyone had aerobars: road bikes, mountain bikes, and oddly some brat on a BMX bike. I think it helped him finish his last 40k TT in under an hour. And I thought it was weird seeing a racer last week smoking a cigarette. Another oddity I noticed last year was someone who sneaked into the Penn State crit with aerobars. I'm so fixed on these strange appliances. If there were much weirder things going down, the above sights would seem normal. Take penny farling crits for example. Extreme...


In case you don't know yet, our next race is in Delaware. Many of you might not know, actually, since I cannot find a bikereg site for it nor any other documentation of it besides some html on the team page. The following weekend is the Philly Phlyer. I would, though, like to change the name of to the Phrilly Philly Phlyer and request that Joe K wears either what he has worn in the past or something along the lines of the latter photo:

It's like that awful, cross-chaining sound...

Still trying to piece together a cohesive view of this weekend's activities, I've decided to focus more on the lesser things involved: objects that enhanced our racing experience. Let's start with:

1. my Gamin. I commend it for not taking us on toll roads, but why would it suggest the Turnpike when we were 3 minutes from the ITT? At one point, I think it told us to "keep right, then keep right, then make U-turn when possible"

2. Ray Ban's. We referred to them as Roy Bahns, though, as we got them in Shanghai for ~3$ each. Don't mind the glass lenses or the fact that they don't fit on your face properly. Simply enjoy them as they fail to intimidate others and graciously whip wind into your eyes. At least you know if you would happen to fall with them, there is a better chance of going blind...

3. 3M Adhesive Spray. Definitely suggest this for any race. Not sure how it holds up to hotter races or long road races, but it held up well this weekend. We simply sprayed it lightly over our numbers and shazam. Look how our numbers now delicately contour the dreamy body of Tyler as compared to Drexel Dan. Drexel Dan..... It also takes so much less time to fit right onto your jersey.

4. Eye-catching bar tape. Again refer to the Tyler photo. Keep a lookout for glow-in-the-dark for the pro twilight crit this Saturday. It might be impossible to grip in sweaty conditions, but where else can you accessorize with neon green? Bling...

5. DZ-Nuts. It is one of those try-it-you'll-like-it deals. And if you don't end up liking it, well then I guess you're stuck with the rest of the tube. But it (your money) does go to a good cause (Dave Zabriskie).

6. Derailleur hangers. One definitely saved Charlie's addict frame, though I wish I could say the same about Chaz, himself. My hanger, however, was crucial in constant misshifts and chainsucking. Of those cheering on Saturday's crit, I manage to hear "Aw man, that sounds awful."

7. McDonald's. I wasn't surprised to see any other cyclists as we were driving from the ITT to the crit on Saturday. I felt my Angus burger reacquaint itself with my mouth once in my race. Max retasted all of it... during his race... Even A racers know how to do it up.

8. Grease Truck? I don't know where we were, but how didn't I ever before have chicken fingers, cheese steak, mozzarella sticks, and french fries in a hoagie roll? WTF mate?!

9. John Hunter's wife's cookies. Yes, he is newly-married, and yes she made cookies for us. And yes, again, to the fact I found out about them three days after the race. Someone inhaled them...

10. New kits! Why didn't we ever think of becoming completely unnoticed in order to do whatever we want? It has been working out great. And plus, having white on your bibs just means more grease stains! Doubely-double style points.



All of these combined are so much more powerful than any blood packet can do for your performance. We are currently working on race number holder things for installation on rear brakes. If you have McGiver-like ideas, pass them forward. Also look for us for a possible sampling of our number idea. One can look forward to a future weekend that is New Jersey free...




Jay G.