Many thanks to CSU Cycling President Caley Fretz for reporting on this seasons first weekend below!

Photo Credit Caley Fretz

The first races of the season are always a crapshoot. Nobody knows what kind of form their legs hold, who else is going to be on or off their game, or even who’s going to show up. So when a team’s first few races go as well as it did for the CSU Rams Cycling team this past weekend, it’s particularly encouraging.

Races opened up on Saturday at the Denver University City Park Crit, a triangular loop complete with three roundabouts and a nasty little chicane. Not an ideal course for brand new racers, as much of the Men’s C and Women’s B fields were. But the Rams were ready- this wasn’t their first rodeo after all. Thanks to some pre-season team practice crits, the new Ram racers weren’t quite as new as everyone else, and it showed. In the first four laps, a field of 60 in the C’s was whittled down to 30, and all but one CSU rider (who got caught up in a nasty crash) made the selection. A few laps later another selection was made, this time in the form of a breakaway of 8 heading off the front. Four of the eight were CSU.

From the UNC Cycling team....

The 2010 collegiate cycling schedule has been released, and the University of Northern Colorado cycling team is eagerly anticipating the upcoming race season. With a similar schedule to last year, we are looking forward to improving on our results from a year ago. In the 2009 season, we enjoyed some solid performances which included wins by David Leonard in the men’s B Air Force road race, A.J. Turner in the men’s C Denver University crit, and Ben Norris in the men’s C Fort Lewis and Colorado College crits. We also earned some hardware at the RMCCC finals last year with A.J. accumulating the most total points on the season for men’s C in Division II and Liz Martin earning the same title for women’s B. Additionally, we sent Alex Lewis to nationals in Fort Collins where he represented us well and finished a respectable 16th in a tough road race.