The hospital room became a very familiar place for junior Jonathan Craig last spring. He was sent there after playing the sport he loved gave him a fractured hip and jammed a safety pin into his arm. Craig isn't a football player or a varsity athlete. He's a member of AU's Cycling team.
"There's definitely a significant chance for a crash in every race," he said.
Despite the likelihood of injury when riding a bike at speeds reaching 35 mph, the squad has always been near the top of its conference, where its membership has increased since it was formed two years ago.
The club hatched from a coincidence when Craig happened to live on the same floor as fellow cycling buff Gregory Abbott. The two freshmen got together to form an outlet for their interest and founded the AU Cycling Club. At first there were four members, but the club had no money and only Abbott and Craig consistently competed.
Today the squad has 12 riders and has ridden a wave of success toward greater financial support. The team won the Atlantic Coast Collegiate Cycling Conference last year and has sent five members to the national championships. Such credentials are explained in proposal letters to potential sponsors to make the team a good sell.
"It helps that we've had success," Craig said. "We have that as weight when we're asking for money. Companies want to be associated with a winning team."
The team gets about half of its money from the AU's club sports budget, while the rest comes from sponsors, Craig said. Some businesses give discounts on equipment and others give money, as long as they get something in return.
"Jerseys are made to be billboards," Abbott said.
Witness the advertising-heavy jersey of cycling star and U.S. Postal Service team member Lance Armstrong, and it's clear that this is a sport that naturally leans toward sponsorship, whether it's the Tour de France or the collegiate Navy Criterion.
The sponsors' logos on AU's jerseys frequently come across the finish line first since the season began in March. The team is in second place in the conference after weekends at Navy, Maryland and Appalachian State. Road races can be 70 miles for top riders and 50 for beginners, and sometimes include 1,000-foot elevation changes.
"The ability to suffer is the ability to do better," Abbott said of the challenges of cycling.
Members train 20 hours per week through the parks and streets of the area all year for the rigors of the season. Teammate Chris Decker said he had ridden 3,500 miles since August - slightly more than typical for most riders.
Veterans work with beginners, who constitute about a quarter of the team, to ease them into the routine without overworking themselves. A road race's distance can be overwhelming to cyclists new to the circuit.
"Ten miles almost seems to be the limit at first," Abbott said. "But once you get better, that's just a warmup."
Preparing for a race is more than simply a matter of being fit enough to complete a hilly, long-distance course. There's also an element of team strategy.
"Cycling is a sport that's more like high-speed chess," Abbott said.
Members work together to slipstream - getting behind a rider to pick up speed - and to keep rivals from getting to the front. They also complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, depending on the demands of each segment of the course.
But for all the strategy and endurance they prepare for, there is still the inevitable accident. Craig's hip-fracturing spill came when he hit a cone at 35 mph and, in Abbott's words, turned his wheel into a taco shell. Decker once maneuvered a curve at 30 mph when his bike lost its tire. A dangerous course can be spotted before the race even starts, but for cyclists, there's no room for fear.
"The best thing to do during a race is to push it out of your mind," Decker said.
