It's Little 500 time

As students slowed down their schoolwork and began to prepare for the "World's Greatest College Weekend," Little 500 riders began to slow down too. But their adjustment was different, as they prepare for Saturday's 55th running of the men's Little 500 at Bill Armstrong Stadium. The men cut back their training to be at full strength for the race and prepared to get in the mindset to be in front on the 199th lap. \n"We are making sure we are all completely healthy," said Phi Kappa Psi sophomore Erik Styacich of the team's pre-race preparations. "We go over race tape, make sure we have enough rest so that we are at full strength for Saturday."\nPhi Psi, who holds the pole position on Saturday, has been performing well in the series events -- placing eighth in Team Pursuit -- but the team has plenty of competition coming from the rest of the pack, including high performance teams like Alpha Tau Omega, Briscoe, Dodds House, Phi Gamma Delta and returning champions Cutters. \nWhile the team has said they understand they'll have an automatic "X" on their back come Saturday, they'll still be taking the race one lap at a time.\n"Winning the pole was nice, but it's still 200 laps on Saturday," Styacich said. \nAfter a devastating loss to Cutters last year, ATO has come into this year's season bigger and stronger than ever, dominating in the form of junior Hans Arnesen, who has gotten everything out of Little 500 but a first place win on race day. Arnesen recorded a track record at Individual Time Trials with a time of 2 minutes, 15.78 seconds. He went on to win Miss-N-Out and the team finished Team Pursuit in fourth place.\nWhile Arnesen said the team doesn't have any specific goals other than winning, he said they do know how their training will help them in the end.\n"We're going to keep focused and know what we have to do to win the race," Arnesen said. "I know that we have the confidence to win it this year."\nWhile ATO has the confidence, Fiji has the team résumé after winning the spring series events with the least amount of points. Scoring for the events is done is reverse order. Signifying they are the series winner, Fiji will wear white jerseys on race day.\nAlthough many teams say the three series events -- Individual Time Trials, Miss-N-Out and Team Pursuit -- has no bearing on the race itself, senior Fiji rider Matt Davis said the events have something to do with what's to come, along with a little luck.\nAfter their 2004 third place finish, Fiji came back more powerful in 2005 winning Team Pursuit and had two team members -- Davis and senior Stephen Spencer -- in the finals of Miss-N-Out.\n"I think we are four strong and we should have a really strong team out there on race day," Davis said. \nOther than pole sitter Phi Psi, Fiji and ATO, other teams to look out for are dorm teams Briscoe and Dodds House, who have been performing well in the series events with Dodds House finishing third at Team Pursuit and Briscoe finishing sixth. Dodds also has veteran senior Craig Luekens, who finished third at ITTs and second at Miss-N-Out. \nWhile most Little 500 teams have slowed down, most still have the mindset of leading the pack at lap 199. Since Phi Psi hasn't seen the top of the Little 500 list since the 1960s, they are still taking it one lap at a time and will see were they are were 199 comes. \n"We're not concentrating on starting at No. 1," Styacich said. "But concentrating on doing well with the entire 200 laps."\n-- Contact Senior Writer\nKatie Schoenbaechler at kmschoen@indiana.edu.