Collegiate Nationals update

I have been checking the results of the event on line through
www.usacycling.org and was able to discern that the weather made for a long
and draining weekend.

It was a mixed weekend for Samuel. Sometimes the stars align in your favor
and sometimes not. The rain in Colorado Springs caused a lot of rearranging
of events so that the organizers had to shuffle and then reshuffle the
schedule. Originally scheduled for Thursday night, the Kilo was moved to
today. Sam was ready to do the kilo and then had to prep for the match
sprints instead.

I have looked at 200m times throughout the past weeks, and knew Samuel was
amongst the very fastest collegiate cyclists (top 3.) Because of the rain,
the communiqué was changed to include the top 12 only. Sam shouldn't of had
any problems, but he was only able to make the 15th fastest time. When I
talked to him, he was understandably disappointed.

The track in Colorado Springs is a 333M track, but the Superdrome is a 250M
track, so that caused some difficulty because of the lack of experience. Sam
said he had too fast of a windup and this resulted in a significantly lower
TT. Further, the rain and the schedule did not allow enough time to practice
the 200 on that track.

He was confident that if he had made it to the match sprints he would have
beat most of then in the sprint rounds, short of Daniel Espinoza, who was
the champion on the day. Matt Fox of Wichita Falls MSU did a fine job to get
third.

The kilo was Sam's last event, rather than his first. Over 70 cyclists
competed in the kilo TT and he ended up getting 12th. Samuel's PB was
previously a 1:12.67 at the Elite Qualifer, but he even exceeded his hope of
a 1:10, taking 4 seconds off of his best time, finishing with a 1:08.68.
Getting your personal best in such a big event and after a weekend of
frustration due to weather and inexperience with a larger track, we should
all be extremely proud of what he accomplished at Nationals. He has one more
year to compete, and we need to make sure that throughout the next year we
are able to send him again, and to make it even less of a financial burden
on him.

So let's "Pony up" by riding more, growing both clubs more and supporting
the Boulevard Crit initiative! Making SMU Cycling bigger and better can only
help Samuel, Noah, Lisa, Jeff, Noelle, Brent, Nicky, Travis and our other student cyclists.