A view from the trenches (Or how I spent my fall semester racing the ECCC)

Greetings, So glad to be back after a long hiatus from posting. After spending the last 2 months hitting the books for my first semester at the University of Vermont, I have come out alive. In addition, I spent some time racing with the UVM cycling team at a couple mountain races including the University of New Hampshire Men's B race and UMass's Men's A Race at Jiminy Peak. Both weekends were exciting and packed with plenty of short track and cross country racing. Getting out and seeing some of the New England countryside was also pretty nice. Anyways, both cross country courses were well constructed and suitable for a PA boy such as myself, with fast, wet, rooty and rocky, technical singletrack. On the other hand, UMass constructed, very masochistically, a short track XC course consisting of laps straight up Jiminy Peak's ski slopes and right back down again. Painful. In the end, I earned my gold star with a 1st place finish in the Men's B XC race and 6th in the STXC at UNH and 9th place in the Men's A XC and 7th STXC at UMASS. In the end, the University of Vermont comes out on top, winning the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) title in MTB by 4 points over UMass. Can't wait for 'cross season to start.

Temperatures in the mid 40s, winds of 15-20 mph, and torrential rains. What a great day to start doing hill repeats to prepare for the Dirty Dozen.