Author: Dean DeChiaro
Occidental College’s Cycling club (yeah, that’s right, Oxy has a cycling club) is training hard for the upcoming road bike racing season. Becky Siegel (senior) and Ellie Foran (senior) first founded the club on campus in Fall 2008. The idea came to them while training with a professional coach for a 100-mile tour in June 2008 for a non-profit organization, Team in Training. Otherwise known as “a century ride” in the world of cycling, the tour raised millions of dollars for leukemia. Individually, Foran raised $4,300 with the aid of garage sales, and Siegel raised $4,000. In return, experienced cyclists provided training, fundraising tips and support.
Siegel got hooked on racing after this event and became interested in collegiate racing during the past year. She wanted Oxy to participate, saying, “I looked at the steps needed to get Oxy in as a team.” She put these ideas into action and formed the club with a two part objective: to be a club and a team. The club is not only for people who are interested in racing, but rather provides an opportunity for cyclists to ride. As a team, members compete in races.
The road biking season has just begun. In the fall, there were about two rides per week open to the student body. Presently, due to the intense training there will only be one ride per week open to all interested students. The rest of the time will be devoted to drills and exercises. Usually there are only a few people on each ride and the club’s total active participants number between ten and fifteen.
With the clubs first race of the season quickly approaching on Feb. 13, Seigel says that “getting interested people trained in time is the biggest challenge for the club.” There are ten to twelve races during the season throughout California and many of the races are put on by the National Collegiate Cycling Association; Oxy belongs to the Western Collegiate Cycling Conference.
Last fall, Oxy participated in the extreme racing sport, cyclocross, which, according to Foran, “is a combination of road and mountain biking, as I like to say, with cross country because you actually dismount and jump over barriers and run uphill, run through mud and sometimes, even snow.”
Foran and Siegel participated in other races as a part of Team Cycle, a group started by Dorothy Wong, a professional mountain biker who started to get into cyclocross. She was the only woman racing for many years and she started recruiting other women to join her. She had a trailer full of bicycles and stopped at community centers. She told them the benefits of commuting and, as a result, she started this club. The club freely provides demonstration bikes for whomever wishes to try the sport. The bikes vary from both road and mountain bikes, with a different shape designed for bigger tires while maintaining light weight, allowing the rider to carry the bicycle when necessary.
Wong is also responsible for organizing the cyclocross series. While she runs the entire operation by finding sponsors and finding prizes, she also manages to find the time to compete as well. “She is very inspiring. She works great under pressure,” Siegel said.
Before every race in the series there is a free beginner’s clinic. There are demonstration bikes which can be used. Also, veterans come to teach “newbies” how to properly mount and dismount – a very valuable skill in this extreme sport.Support for Cycle Club comes not only from Occidental College, but the local bike shop Budget Bicycle as well. The shop, which is located near the Eagle Rock Target, provided enough money to partially pay for the jerseys. Budget Bicycle also supports the club by conducting a free clinic for Oxy students, demonstrating how to fix bikes, as well as providing a discount to all students who visit the shop.
Other monetary donations have come from Professor Sternlicht of Occidental’s Kinesiology department and his company, Simply Fit, an independent consulting company.
For the spring semester, a schedule of rides has already been decided. The goal is to represent Oxy at the Conference Championships on April 25 and 26th at U.C. Davis.
“It could be fun if some of us could go to that. This is a semester of learning where our strengths and weaknesses are,” Siegel said. All of us can hope to improve throughout the season. Don’t know where we stand right now, but that’s our bright future.”
Siegel stresses that people can still join and those interested ought to contact her at rsiegel@oxy.edu. “The club right now is very senior heavy and I’d like to get other people involved,” Siegel said. “I’d like to see this program continue in the future.”
Foran also encourages students to get involved.
“Cycling is healthy for the environment, healthy for the body, healthy for socializing. Do it, it’s great.”
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