Road Survey 2010

From the collective hive mind of the ECCC comes the 2010 version of the Road survey.  The best of the best and the worst of the worse, it is all here for your comedic pleasure.

Please not that this in no way reflects the view or opinions of:

Joe Kopena, Caitlin Thompson, Ian Sullivan

USAC, ECCC, Any cycling governing body

Any of the Schools mentioned, Anyone really…..

So with no further ado please enjoy The Survey

Team with the Highest Number of Respondents

1. Universitas Viridis Montis with 27 respondents and 10.1% of the Votes
2. Massachussetts Institute of Technology with 20 respondents and 7.5% of the Votes
3. a three way tie for third with 14 votes and 5.2% of the votes: Yale, The University of Massachusetts , and Dartmouth

The Best Team Kit:

Sometimes bike racing isn’t all about crossing the line first, it is about looking good.  With a multitude of schools to choose from the ECCC has spoken about the best looking duds on the roads.

1. Dartmouth With 18 votes and 11.1% of the votes
2. Shippensburg with 14 votes and 8.6% of the votes
3. Bucknell with 11 votes and 6.8% of the votes

Worst Team Kit:

Sad to say, but some of the teams in the ECCC just look bad.  They are giving bright and tight a bad name every time they put their chamois on.  These are the team kits that the rest of the Conference hopes they won’t get caught in a picture next to.

1. Cornell with 15 votes and 9.9% of the votes
2. University of Delaware with 12 votes and 7.9% of the votes (editors note: despite changing their jerseys from the universally despised ‘Mario Cippollini Zebra Pattern, the Conference still doesn’t like their choices)
3. Williams with 11 votes and 7.3% of the votes

Single Biggest Investment in a Bike:

You gotta have some dollars or a real sweet sugar mama/daddy go roll on bikes like these.

1. With Double the votes of anyone else as one voter put it, “Max Korus – Brand new Cervelo, full red gruppo, seemingly infinite sets of race wheels? WTF?”
2. “Raymond Junkins with his BMC and HED wheels”
3. “AJ Moran: Those stickers that spell his name must have cost some dolla dolla bills!”
4. “the 29er road bike, it has got some attention before. and there are lots of kinds of investments we simply just can’t attach a number to”

Biggest Investment in Gear By a Single Person:

While the bikes always get a lot of attention.  All of the other brick-a-brack is pretty cool too, and some of it is worth the GDP of small Central Asian Countries.  Who has got the Gear that we jealously can’t stop talking about?

1. Chewie from the MIT team- he has about 6 bikes, and 18 sets of wheels: practice wheels, training wheels, race wheels, race race wheels, race race race wheels, race race race race wheels, really race race race race wheels, etc etc etc, plus several different stems which he will change depending on intensity of crit, speed, or comfort level (a longer taller stem for increased comfort during the non-sprinter friendly Dartmouth road race, which he knew was going to be hellish and wouldn’t finish).
2. Max Korus is actually a C-level rider, but has bought speed with a Cervelo S3 with SRAM Red, 808s (with a 404 for windy days), EC-90 pit wheels, Ksyrium SL training wheels, & a powertap in an open pro. This is his collegiate racing bike. His Super Six & P3 at home did not see any action, though his Cannondale Slice and Sub 9 disc did make some appearances in the TTTs this year.   (Editor’s note:  Max is a very good rider too)
3. Not sure — some people seemed to spend so much on gear (i.e. $1000 wheels) that they had no time to train, though!
4. The kid from Stevens who signs his emails “Big Wheels”. (Editor’s Note: this is Raymond Junkins)

Sexiest Bike:

This is what it is all about.  What you show up to the start line between your legs is what drives the crowd wild.  Who has the steed that lights up the world:

1. “Scott Igo’s from UVM because it was a mountain bike frame and he still killed it” (Editor’s Note,  see the full article here)
2. Jamey Driscol’s ‘Unbranded’ carbon bike for Easterns.  (For the real name of it, ask one of your teammates who saw it)
3. AJ Moran‘s White Cervelo with Zipp Wheels and Campy Kit

Sexiest Team:

These teams truly do honor to what it means to fill out lycra.

1. With 25 Votes Bucknell University
2. With 21 Votes UVM: “UVM. While not a physically appealing or attractive bunch by any stretch of the imagination, after spending time with them at nationals, watching them repeatedly dry hump each other in every conceivable position, I will say they ooze sexuality, though very little of it in a good way.”
3. With 7 votes Columbia University: ‘Columbia. They aren’t just hot, they’re New York hot.’

Least Sexy Team:

Title says it all

1. With 17 Votes UVM: “UVM: Dropping like flies at the Nationals RR… really let me down. So unsexy, really, weak is not hot.”
2. With 14 Votes MIT: “MIT – God! Change out of your chammy and jersey!!!”  (Editor’s Note Chamois, it is spelled Chamois)

Editor’s Note:  with the top two teams in the overall taking almost all of the votes in the least sexy team, one has to wonder if the rest of you should spend less time on looking good.

Best Male Rider

1. With 14 votes Pavel Gonda
2. With 13 votes Max Korus
3. With 12 votes Lee Peters

Editors Note: With the season being as tight as it was, it isn’t surprising the voting was too.  An honorable mention for this response  “Joe Kopena. Year after year he struggles to hang in with the intro field; you’ve got to admire that kind of determination.”

Best Female Rider

1. Despite only doing a few races.  The strength and dominance of this rider was clear to the rest of the ECCC Ari Filliberti tied the win with 18 votes
   

   Filiberti (R) overcame lapped traffic and her own field. Photo by Chatura Atapattu

2. Also with 18 votes and both the Green and Yellow Jerseys,  Martha Buckley
3. Anna McLoon came in third with 12 votes

Best Crash:

This was a runaway win for Lee Peters.  He crashed while sprinting for 2nd in the Easterns Crit.  We can all enjoy watching this crash, secure in the knowledge that Lee was practically unharmed.  A little bit of road rash was all that happened.  Here are two Youtube videos to show the Carnage.

Best Race:

Race promotion is a really hard task.  Some bear the burden with much much less stress than others.  The best races are the one that all you notice is the other racers and the sublime terrain.  2010’s best race was voted to be:

Dartmouth Race weekend with 46% of the votes.  “Easterns (Dartmouth), beautiful weather, funny commentators (loved the two person bike), great people, and some epic times like losing the bike trailer on the way there and dancing on vans”

Best Victory Salute

While not encouraged for anyone in a group finish.  It is one of the most emphatic and euphoric gestures that a bike racer can make.  People dream of what they would or will do.  The great ones are poetic end of a glorious race.  Here are a few of the favorites.

• ‘The guy from Penn State that raced the Bucknell Crit. He rode 50+ miles to the crit, lapped the men’s A, had the whole finishing stretch to himself…. gave Coach a high five when he crossed the line. That’s what biking should be about.”  (Editor’s Note:  Clayton Barrows)
• ‘The Jamey Driscoll at Easterns. UVM National Championship kit victory salute steeeeeez!’
• ‘Lee Peters 2nd place “this is what I think of your yellow jersey” crash salute’  (Editor’s Note:  This was the most voted for ‘salute?!?!?’)
  

Best Trash Talkers:

Some people just have to be competitive with their mouths as well as with their legs.  Quite a few people weighted in on the people that they hear all of the time, even when they are crossed eyed and deep in the pain cave…..

• First place was a tie between two riders.  Not surprisingly bot of them are from UVM: “Pat Cafferky, he will talk till you ride him off your wheel”  and “Tristan Baldwin, but he mostly trash talks immediately pre-race.”
• In third place with one of the best straight faced trash talking I have ever heard, Bob Stumpf before the A team time trials. “Bucknell, make sure when we pass you, you stay to the right.”

Best/ Funniest Conversation Overheard During a Race:

Craziness, Nuff Said

• “It’s a kamikaze pact: If we’re both last, we’ll crash into each other and DNF.” (Yale and UPenn)
• “Please let’s catch Martha! I know you’re her teammate, but if we work together to catch her, I PROMISE I’ll let you win!” overheard during the Dartmouth RR between Yuri (MIT) and another girl. Yeah right, like that’s going to happen! Martha still won and Yuri attacked on the hill and dropped everybody so fast it wasn’t even funny.
• “What if [the whole field] took a break, went and got cheese steaks, and then came back and finished the race? Would they disqualify us for leaving the course?”
• “I don’t know if I can race… I got some of that embrocation stuff on my tender bits and its burning horribly”
• while on a climb at dartmouth, pat cafferky made note to the whole B field that they are so predictable.
• “Bear Grylls would love this hill.”…..”Its packed with VITimins.”
• Fashion faux pas during the Yale Circuit: “Oh my gawd, I can totally see your panty line!” “I always wear panties under my bibs. Don’t you??”
• “Excuse me, I would like to attack now!” – Pavel Gonda, not so much a conversation as a statement, but whatever.
• “Who designed this course? Jackson Pollock?” on the technical portion of the Philly circuit.
• “I woke up and she was just in my bed next to me. I don’t even know what happened. I think I may have been taken advantage of. -It happens to the best of us…”
• “hey harvard, ride in a straight line!” “What the fuck is the matter with you? want me to punch you in the face?” “no I want you to ride in a straight line, but thats sure is a really ivy league thing to say.” “

Best Pick-Up Line:

As demonstrated by Conference Director Joe Kopena you can pick up more than just glory on the roads of the ECCC.  He met is Fiance and Assistant Conference Director Caitlin Thompson in the ECCC.  I wonder If he used one of these lines?

• Cyclists don’t know how to pick people up. It’s a scientific fact. When they try, it usually doesn’t end well. It goes somewhere along the lines of “Hey, does this smell like chloroform to you?”
• “I have tiny cassette because I’m HUGE”
• “You want to pin my numbers?”
• we are umass we dont use pick up lines girls just flock
• “How much does a polar bear weigh?” I don’t know, how much? “Enough to break the ice, my name’s R@#s M(*&^%$n.”
• “We are doing a bike race at 2pm in the center of campus, it’ll be a good time, you should come.”

Best Nick Name:

Cycling has a venerable tradition of great nicknames.  Eddy Mercks was ‘the Cannibal,’ Bernard Hinnault was ‘the Badger’ and of Sam Hill is ‘the flat pedal thunder from down under.’  Only one nickname popped up again and again.

Pavel Gonda, ‘The Dark Lord’

Best Music:

It is all about the tunes, what ones were pumping it up this year.

• Lady Gaga
• Taylor Swift
• ‘UVM, the only thing better than a drum and bugle would be a drum, bugle and a fife…’
• ‘All ECCC music was bad.’
• ‘anything top-40, trance, remix from UVM cause thats all you can hear.’  (Editor’s Note:  Clearly the Conference has to invest in a more powerful PA if all you can hear is UVM’s Vans)

Worst Music:

Sometimes the Skills of the ECCC just lacking, what were the worst things that you heard this year?

• ‘Everytime Pat Cafferky snuck onto the ipod and put on his Michael Jackson mix!’
• ‘Stop playing system of a Down at the finish line you sixth graders.’
• Yale Weekend UVM van “finding yourself through christian music”
• ‘UVM and that awful awful horn they insisted on bringing…’
• ‘RIT played nothing but Lady Gaga out of their van at Yale.’
• ‘Indie/pop/punk/emo-cut-yourself music. Who actually listens to this?’
• ‘Sully, tehcnically not music, just Sully constantly releasing hot air over the sound system.’  (Editor’s Note:  ‘ohhhh Snap’)
• ‘Radiohead, there is a time and a place Joe Kopena’
• ‘anything acoustic, not bashing acoustic by any means, but there’s a time and a place, which is not the ECCC’

Best Team:

Sometimes the results boards don’t always bear out the way that we feel about the teams of the ECCC and how good they actually are.  Here we give you the chance to voice your feelings on who is really the best.

1. UVM with 23.6% of the votes
2. Dartmouth with 9.4% of the votes

Best Team Captain

Having been one, I can tell you that being a team captain is a long thankless job.  All of the failures are blamed on you and all of the victories are attributed to the athletes.  Despite this, every year, countless individuals across the ECCC manage their teams and fill up the start lines of each and every race.  My hat goes off to all of you.

1. ‘Lee Peters. Honestly, he kept our UVM hoard in check, was instrumental in hosting a kick-ass MTB race, barely ever got lost, and still had time to drop kick the ECCC into submission all road season long.’  18 votes
2. ‘Anna Olivier, Yale. Still came out to races after breaking her clavicle and scapula.’
3. ‘Karl “the kannibal” Honerlaw“

Best Moment:

• “Getting crushed by Jamey Driscoll. Seriously Jamey, you have nothing better to do on a given weekend then beat up some poor collegiate kids? What would your mother think?”  (Editor’s Note:  I know Jamey’s mom, she is very proud that he stayed in Vermont so he wouldn’t miss a week of class to race in South America.  As to beating up on some poor College kids, you might try pedaling harder……)
• “When we lifted Joe at easterns”
• “The D field crashing during the Army Circuit race because they all decided to go for the dollar primes that were placed on the hill”
• “Winning my first points!”
• “Shaving my legs for the first time”
• “When Kyle & Natan rode the tandem during men’s intros at Dartmouth.”
• “Women’s AB Army crit. Most fun race of the season! That was some real racing.”
• “Finishing Grant’s Tomb crit. In a Nor’easter”

Worst Moment of the Season:

Not all racing is Champange, Podiums and Glory, there are bad and terrible moments to be sure.  Let find out the worst of the worst in the ECCC of 2010…..

• “Sleeping through the start of my last collegiate road race :p”
• “Shaving my legs for the first time”
• “The Grant’s Tomb crit. It was the worst in a good way though.”
• “Crashing twice on the same downhill turn on the Easterns crit”
• “Still not having our kits because our school is too lazy to cut a check from the team bank account.”(Editor’s note:  If that was the worst moment of the 2010 season you are super vain, or just have nothing go wrong ever.)
• “After stating all I wanted out of Rutgers was a finish, coming into turn 4 at the head of the peloton as I finished my leadout, thinking, “I’m gonna make it.” Then my bars got hooked from behind and I went down in the opening crit for the 3rd year in a row. At least this year it wasn’t my fault.”  (Editor’s Note:  John Frey, velocityresults.net, says that there is no such thing as a crash that you were in that wasn’t your fault.)
• “Staging for the Nationals Road Race… Its an awesome idea to have 150 guys standing in the freezing rain to listen to Dave Toll talk about how much he loves CU Boulder.”  (Editor’s Note: They should hire me, I will talk about how much I love the ECCC and freshly shaved legs….)
• “Going on that breakaway and realizing that your entire team who was done racing ditched out to go home early and missed seeing my solo breakaway.”
• “When the food ran out at Easterns”
• “The fact that its over and MTB season isn’t til the fall.”

Best Recruiting Strategy:

With people graduating all the time, you gotta find new racers.  Overwhelmingly these rely on the ‘attractiveness’ of the male cycling members.  No wonder so many teams are small.  Things that might make you the next power house of the ECCC:

• “Legally: Free food. Illegally: Free beer. Even Worse: Free strippers.”
• “Dartmouth: “Let’s host Easterns then get all these randoms to show up that nobody has ever seen before! We’ll collect double points with no work” (Note to Joe: How about a “must have done another race before Easterns rule?)”  (Editor’s Note:  Methinks a bitter 2nd Place Ivy League….)
• “Have a weekly recovery team ride that you publicize that’s super slow, super conversational, and on a nice pretty and flat loop. Show people the social side of cycling, and they’ll be hooked in no time.”
• “Ask girls if they like guys with shaved legs, proceed to recruit no matter their reaction”
• “Dartmouth College Ad for the cycling team with the quote “come ride bikes with beautiful people””
• “Get all the triathletes and teach them to ride a bike.”
• “Hands free on the rollers; non cyclists stare for hours.”
• “Trailer with free candy”
• “Promising that the guys team will not try to date any new girls who join.”
• “Yale’s. We buy kids bikes, seriously, everyone gets a free bike……ok, well, we promote it that way.”
• “Solving the rubik’s cube on rollers.”

Best Inter-Team Fraternization:

The Deepest Darkest Secrets come to light:

• “SnowCrit Drinking, cross bikes,and a foot of fresh snow.”
• “UConn, I think there may be babies in the works.”
• “Mcdonalds after every race. The McGangBang is where one puts a McChicken (bun and all) in between the patties of a Double Cheeseburger. 50% of the whole Northeastern team was eating them by Easterns.”
• “Watching our Women’s team shut down the NYU Men’s team.”
• “Temple & Penn. I actually go to Temple, but it was assumed by most I went to Penn, so much so that Temple was not listed amongst the teams in the ECCC survey.”
• “UVM story time.”  (Editor’s Note:  This is a tradition that would make the paint peel off the walls, not fit for the ECCC news site, but ask somebody from the team.)
• “Garrick Dixon (NU) and Jackie Dalessandro (NU). Their fraternization, bickering, etc.. took up it’s whole own Van.”

Best Intra-Team Fraternization:

It seems that some of you might not know the difference between Inter and Intra.  Oh well….

• “UPenn / Vermont –Right up until the Lee/Max showdown when they went from BFF to evil empire nemeses”
• “There was that one time Dartmouth had a marshmallow Peeps Boatrace with UVM. That was cool. It’s on youtube.”
• “Drexel and Hamilton who are now honorary members of each others team.”
• “Various nudity between vans on various highways”
• “Rebecca Wolski (BC) and AJ Moran (Wentworth). Cuddle fest like woah….gag.”

Worst bike handler in Mens A or Womens A:

You have all been talking about him/her all year long, just delicately out of earshot.  Now the veil comes down and they are…..

• “Lee Peters: Who crashes over a finish line lol jk”
• “Everyone from Temple.”
• “Rudy”
• “Mark Theeman”
• “Max Korus.”
• “Some kid from Dartmouth. I am pretty sure he was trying to take out the entire field in the Army Crit.”
• “Evan Cooper, attacking into a solo crash!?!?!”
• “Martha Buckley, easily.”
• “The sketchy Columbia rider in Womens A who got her shifters caught on another girls shorts.”
• “Some blond girl from MIT – worst in Women’s A or B, but took out lots during the season.”

Good racing is always better with someone calling the blow by blow, and no one does it better than our beloved volunteers. Who was the best microphone jock this season?

1. Sully         66 Votes         60.6%
2. Kopena    31 Votes         28.4%
3. Bruley      12 Votes         11%

The action is always better with a little color commentary. What’s your favorite Sully announcing cliche or random historical aside (accuracy claims will not be refuted)?

• “Everytime he very precisely and accurately indicates UVM as the “Universitas Veritas Montanas.””
• “Every weekend, telling everyone that Chris Hamlin sweeped the ECCC MTB season.”  (Swept)
• “Nothing’s more humiliating than being blown off the back, then failing to un-clip and falling over in front of everyone (Army CR)”
• “Here comes Garrick Dixon on the front, and his girlfriend says he’s riding stupid.”
• “Discussing the importance of choosing the right socks – or no socks at all, at Yale.”
• “You’re not in a triathelon! Keep your hands on your handlebars!”
• “If you line up last, no, you will not lose the crit.”
• “Using the term “ECCC” in a positive light at least once every minute for 8 hours straight”
• “Any heckling of UVM riders.”  (Editor’s Note:  Sully was the 2008-2009 UVM Cycling President)
• “Groupo Compacto”
• “Get in the pain cave and dim the lights”

A good conference director is even-handed and impartial, keeping his biases from influencing his actions. But in the end they’re only human. Which team holds the dearest place in Joe K’s secret heart of hearts?:

1. Drexel                                          34 Votes           44.2%
2. UVM                                             14  Votes           18.2%
3. BU (specifically Natan)            5 Votes             6.5%
   

Without Joe K as the ECCC director, the conference would:

1. quickly descend into tribal warfare                           54 Votes                45.8%
2. be bought by google                                                         18 Votes                 15.3%
3. slowly disappear into oblivion                                    17 Votes                  14.4%
4. turn into an elite shuffleboard tournament           10 Votes                   8.5%
5. Others:
6. “I’ve read Lord of the Flies, I know how it turns out.”
7. “turn in to a pokemon trading/playing conference”
8. “have no idea when the next flood is coming. At least now, we just check Joe’s pants for a forecast”  (When you see Joe in his Gor-Tex Pants, you know you are in for a Doozy)
9. “expand into a red giant, and then collapse onto itself forming a pulsar or black hole, depending on the ECCC’s mass.”
10. “be run even more efficiently by Caitlin”
11. “be quickly swallowed up by the rapidly expanding Circuit Cycliste Universitaire du Québec”
12. “Become as lame as the rest of the conferences in the NCCA”
13. “Sully would take over and then it would slowly slip into chaos.”  (Editor’s Note:  Amen!!!)
14. “We would all Cry. All day. Everyday.”
15. “Slowly dwindle until only the four riders of the apocalypse are left (horse riders are so old school, we are going out in a blaze of shaved legs)” Editor’s Note:  This is, for sure, the right answer…..

Anything Else to Say:

• I petition for a mobile Dunkin Donuts to follow behind the pack, especially during early morning races, so that the racers can bike beside it and order a hot coffee and warm donut during the especially cold winter/spring mornings.
• More road races ECCC. Rid yourself of the virus that is flat American bike racing. Vote for Cornell’s incredible race weekend for the ECCC 2011 road season. Come back to Red Cross!
• I love Joe K. Really. I cry myself to sleep every night knowing that my window to steal him away is rapidly closing.
• Shaved legs and porta-potties, yeahhh.
• Thank you so much Joe. You make the racing all possible. If i ever make a lot of money in my life i will remember your generosity. Thanks
• Why does Yale always have someone working on their bike? What is up with Penn State naming themselves the “Domination Squad.” They beat Pitt by a couple seconds each week and raced poorly in the overall. What happened to UVM without Dugan and Driscoll?
• I wish I would have started bike racing about 5 years ago at the beginning of my college career, not the end!  (Uhhhhhh, isn’t college 4 years?)
• Where the hell was UVM this year….you let me down. No shenanigans, antics or blowing anything up. One dude with a Bugle is lame compared to what’s happened in the past. I may have to vote you off the Island if you don’t go back to the ways of Slim and his predecessors…
• if you want to be really serious about racing bikes, then wait until you are a masters racer, but until then you are in college; lighten up and HAVE FUN.
• I was hit by an SUV the Saturday after Easterns, and all I could think as I was backboarded by the EMTs was “at least I finished collegiate season!”
• Imma let you finish, but I just want to say ECCC had the best season ever!

Editor’s note:  If you have read this far…..   I don’t even know what to say to you.  Get a job, ride your bike, something.  Hopefully we can trick somebody else into doing this next year.

See you all in the fall