Whitman's back at Nats!

3:08am. While most of the population of Ogden, UT was sleeping, the Whitman College Cycling Team was rolling into the Summit Hotel after a 9 hour drive. Surprisingly, the drive didn't actually seem to take that long, and the time didn't actually seem that late*. So that's cool. And the best part of staying in a hotel is that we all get beds! Oh my gosh! So exciting!

THURSDAY:
We pre-rode the TTT course: practiced some turn-arounds (around a human turn around post - some very nice girl stood in the middle of the road for a bunch of teams to practice), did all of our sightseeing since we knew we wouldn't be doing it during the race, saw some buffalo (or maybe bison... we aren't sure),** bottle hand-off practice, and ate a first-class lunch made by our wonderful chaperones (Dave & LeAnn) and Roxy (Roxy graduated a couple of years ago and came back to help us :D). After TTTing we picked up packets, people-watched other teams (at least I did...), hung out, and then went out to dinner at a really good Indian place.
Also... It was Whitney's birthday!

FRIDAY:
TTT DAY***! And now I'm back to my usual bullet points because writing in paragraph format is way too difficult and I am way too tired to do anything that technical. Also please forgive any typos or weird sentences...

• We learned how intense of a set-up some of the varsity, DI programs have
• The girls all re-wrapped their bar tape in Bontrager 'Serious Pink' handlebar tape, carrying on a long standing women's nats team tradition
• The women's team was the 1st team off the start line of the 2013 USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships!!
• A bison came into the road during the women's TTT. Luckily we had Rachel to use her bison-whispering skills to make the bison move off the road so that we barely had to slow down.
• The men will have to update you later, but apparently Luke almost hit a quail...
• Women came in 2nd in the D2 TTT! Men came in 10th.
• Whitman is 3rd in the team omnium going into the crit tomorrow
• The parents that are here (Molly's, Luke's, and Rachel's) made us dinner!!!
• Dave Tupper gave us wonderful massages to get us ready for the crit tomorrow

Crit is tomorrow, RR is Sunday - we will keep you updated throughout the weekend! Keep checking Twitter (@WhitmanCycling) and Facebook (Whitman Cycling)!

Love,
Molly


*The views in this blog do not necessarily reflect all of the opinions of the 8 riders in the car.
** They're bison. We did some googling. Apparently there aren't buffalo in the US.
***The views of the TTT are being written from the perspective of a women's racer. Hopefully one of the men's racers will write a blog about their race.