In March, Carolyn Donnelly read about the accounts of the UNM women’s basketball team’s attempt to earn the first team national championship in school history and thought it was wrong. She knew of one program that had competed under the University’s umbrella and earned a team championship — the Lobo Cycling Club.
“They were saying no one from UNM has ever won a national championship,” Donnelly said. “I said, ‘Yes, they have.’ We just have no one aware of that.”
Almost two months later, Donnelly, a member of the cycling team, added to the club’s success when she won the National Collegiate Cycling Association National Road Championships road race May 20 in Colorado Spring, Colo., and was the omnium champion. Donnelly finished second in the criterium, which is an individual time trial on a short course, missing first place by two seconds.
She also teamed with Amy Bernier-Jones and Paula Higgins to finish in second place in the team time trials — the event UNM has won two national titles in — missing first place by 30 seconds.
Her performance helped lead the Lobos to a fifth place overall finish in the championships.
“It’s great,” Connelly said. “I have been racing a long time. I’ve won a national championship (as a professional cyclist) but never an individual championship. I was hoping that we would win the time trial.”
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Gareth Jones finished in 10th place in the omnium and seventh in the road race to lead the men’s team. Jones, Mike Pease, Andrew Lynch and Todd Bauer placed sixth in the time trials. Pease said he was happy with the fifth-place finish, but felt they could have done better.
While its achievements have made few headlines, the Lobo Cycling Club has produced five individual national champions and two team champions during the past nine years. Yet, despite all the success, the club has to scramble to earn money.
Pease says the group gets funded about $1,000 from the University’s undergraduate student government and the cyclists pick up the rest of the team’s expenses.
“An average weekend costs about $100 each, and most weekends, we do two races,” Pease said. “There’s entry fees, hotel travel and, when you’re racing 85-100 miles a day, a lot of food.”
Pease said they get few donations from the community, but attributes that to the lack of time team members have to do fund-raising. Trying to balance school, training and a job takes up a lot of their time and leaves little time to try and garner more support.
“It’s a juggling act; if you slack at all you lose a chance to get everything,” Pease said.
Higgins said she had to quit the team when she started graduate school so she could focus on her academic career, but couldn’t avoid the challenge cycling presents her. She said the training part of her schedule saps a lot of her energy.
“At the end, you’re tired and then you have to study,” Higgins said. “It means you’re tired a lot and you don’t get a lot of sleep.”
Experience played a big part in the team’s success this year, especially for the women’s team. All the cyclists are more than 30 years old. Donnelly, 36, is a senior majoring in civil engineering and has raced professionally before entering UNM. She holds the U.S. track time trials record for the five-kilometer, 10-km, 20-km and one-hour times. Higgins, 41, teamed with Donnelly to hold the U.S. record for the 40-km tandem team trial in 1995.
Their experience in racing with the elements helped them in the championships in Colorado Springs. Donnelly said it rained for half of the criterium, and her cycling experience helped her navigate around the one-mile course for her second-place finish. Higgins was involved in a crash during the event, but because of the rain, she had a chance to repair her bike and return to the course in the same place she held before the incident. However, a judging error put her in the rear of the field, and she was lapped.
The road race played into Donnelly’s strength’s — climbing mountains. Her time of 2 hours, 17 minutes and 12 seconds was almost 2 ยด minutes ahead of Colorado State University’s Karen Bockel, who was in second place.
