Bikes have been picked, seats have being lowered and raised, tires have been pumped, chains have been greased and now riders are ready for the 61st Little 500 race.

“Some kids will come to Indiana University just to be in the Little 500.” Chuck Taylor said. “That’s kind of a big deal.”

Taylor rode back in the 1960s for Theta Chi fraternity and is now their coach for the second year. He said he has learned times have changed, and so has his coaching technique.

“Is not as much coaching as it is organizing,” he said. “I’m the guy that has to make sure that we organize practices as best as we can. You have to work in training around college and their social stuff.”

Junior Jake Shields said this is his third year competing and this year’s team is more dedicated, and Taylor has added some stability and structure to their workouts.

“We all are amateurs and there’s a lot of pageantry involved, I’m exited,” he said. “We qualified this year better than we have really ever.”

Sophomore Turner Duncan said he is looking forward to the race and expects the team to do better than their 14th qualifying spot.

Taylor said although back in his days the event was more of a Greek event, today the race has a lot of independent teams and some have national level racers.

Last week the team participated in the practice race, which constitutes of 50 laps. The day of the race the men will have to endure 200 laps.

“I think we were one lap down after 50 laps,” Shields said. “That’s really inspiring.”

Duncan, who’s participating for the first time, said he felt pretty good during practice race.

“It’s a good experience for race day,” he said. “You get the intensity, you get the feeling of working with the pack and also against the pack when you have to get off and do an exchange.”

Duncan said the rider change with one bike is harder, but it’s also faster. Since there is a different variety of height of guys in their team they have to use two bikes, and do a bike-to-bike exchange.

“That’s easier, but a little bit slower,” he said. “We just have to make sure we practice and get it right on race day.”

Taylor said whoever is on the front of the pack is working 33 percent harder than the guy right behind him.

“The further back in the pack you go, the easier it is,” he said. “This requires a mental toughness because there’s a lot of pain involved in cycling and it’s a matter of training hard enough so when other people are hurting you aren’t feeling as bad.”

Turner agreed and said the most challenging part is getting mentally prepared for what they are actually going to do the day of the race.

“Going that fast is pretty scary and you never know if you are going to crash, “ he said. “The mentality is certainly the hardest.”

Taylor said the team has been training since school started back in August, and if sometimes they didn’t go to practice, later on they were out in the road doing mileage.

“All the kids know where they need to be,” he said. “It’s not like basketball where is a team sport. We have a team, but it’s no like A counts on B. This is a deal where each guy can go out and train on his own and be ready for race day.”

It has been 15 years since Theta Chi won a trophy. Taylor said he hopes the team will be among the top 15 teams, which will assure them a trophy.

“There were 47 teams that tried to qualify and only 33 teams will participate,” Taylor said. “We are trying to get into that top 15, well there are other teams lining up that day that are going to try to do the same thing.”

Shields said it was hard to describe the actual feeling of the race and suggested if someone has never seen the race they should come and watch it. The men’s race starts at 2 p.m. Saturday April 16 at the Armstrong Stadium.

“It’s an adrenaline rush for 200 laps,” Shields said. “All the riders line up with their bikes on the track. There are three laps at the beginning, but even before that there’s this huge buildup. It’s all about the spirit of IU and I think little five just signifies all that is IU.”