Natz Update #1

Hello fellow teammates, parents, alumni, supporters, sponsors and anyone else interested in our team,

Welcome to the first Natz Update. I hope these can be a quick daily summary on what’s happening with our NatzCrew :)

There are eight of us racers this year who are at Collegiate Cycling Nationals, broken down into five people racing all three races: Mackinzie, Kevin, Becca, Dessie and Zander. And three people joining in just for the team time trial: Alex, Adam, Maddie.

Yesterday was a travel day. We met up at Whitman at 3.45am PT, drove to Pasco airport, made two flight connections during the day and eventually landed in Asheville NC at 7pm ET. We then picked up our two rental cars, including a HUGE pick up truck, which will be how we carry all the bikes, and drove to Weaverville NC, where we are staying for the extent of this trip (we will be flying back to Whitman on Monday). The Road Race and TTT will take place in Marshall NC and the Criterium will take place in Burnsville NC.

RACE SCHEDULE (east coast time!) for our crew:
Friday May 13- 8am Women's Road Race
Friday May 13- 12pm Men's Road Race
Saturday May 14-11.15am Women's Criterium
Saturday May 14-1.45pm Men's Criterium
Sunday May 15-Team Time Trial day, exact starting times to be announced but beginning at 9.30am with the men

Today we unpacked and put together our bikes. We are so happy that they all arrived in pretty good shape and that we didn’t have to go back to pick up bike boxes from the airport that got delayed sometime during the travel!!! Yay! We also slept in, relaxed, got massages from Dave (thanks Dave!!!!), further dialed in our bikes and rode one lap of the road race course as a means to stretch the legs and also preview the course for the Friday races.

Some noteworthy highlights:

-There are HUGE ants here

-Lots of birdcalls at our rental house

-Maddie got to sleep 13 hours last night (the rest of us aren’t entirely sure how she managed to do that..)

-Zander’s parent’s brought us even more baked goods (it’s too bad gluten doesn’t sit well with me because we have so many yummy looking baked goods and bread stuff around)

-We got a brief downpour in the middle of the day for all of about 5 minutes (welcome to the east coast)

-Turns out the owners of our rental are related to someone from the outdoor program at Whitman that many of us know.. small world

Stay tuned for another update tomorrow!

-Mackinzie