Sorry for the no post recently!

So it has been a while since my last post. For the 2 of you that actually read this, i am sorry. Any way just a quick update: training has been kind of spotty but i'm really motivated as i'm trying to get cat.3 this year. So once i get back from georgia, training will really start. I got a garmin edge 500 for christmas and so far it is an awesome tool. Having so much data literally at my finger tips is amazing. That being said if anyone wants to give me a good deal on a power meter, just email me: nick134679@hotmail.com . As i said my training was spotty and i'm ultra slow right now because im getting ready to do some long slow distance, which means big T.I.T.S. (time in the saddle). At least for me that is. Anyway i wanted to do more milage this last week before i went on vacation and during my break but, life gets in the way. Another big goal is battenkill which is coming up faster than i realize. I had better get to training. Another post is soon to come about the davidsonville holiday ride on christmas eve but i just don't have the time right now.

Turkey Day race report

This sunday was Turkey day in september, and it was awesome! I came into this race just hoping I could hang on because I hadn't really trained since before FCCC in july.
So I showed up early on sunday morning at about 830. My race went off at 1015. This year I have really fine tuned my pre race prep so, I just sat in the car and under the tent in the parking lot. I got registered and all that "jazz". Andrew and ryan showed up about an hour and 15 minutes after. I started warming up at about 930 so I could get in 25 to 30 minutes and still have time to change out my rear wheel and do my roll out. After I got off the trainer I took 2 easy laps to check out the course. While I was reconning the course there were 3 ambulances tending to a crash in the race before mine. Not something I want to see when I'm about to race in the rain. So then I got my roll out and had the typical pre race chat with the official. So we started and I settled into a good rhythym I feel after I got used to the course. I would drop off the back alittle in the last corner so I could take it faster and I could make up the gap on the finishing stretch. Then I would cycle around the group of 20. With about 7 laps to go of a 12 lap crit an ncvc junior attacked and I followed we got a small gap which was awesome. I usually can't even stay with the group in juniors races so I was very happy to be doing something not just being pack fill. But that move was short lived as there were no artemis juniors in it. When we were caught steven kendall counter-attacked and I was in the red for a little while there but I stayed with the group. The road conditions were pretty poor at the stevensville turkey day venue. There were drains every 200 feet or so. I kept getting pinned into one about 1/3 of the way through and I kept having to stop pedaling to go over it. I don't know why I didn't learn from my mistakes. Maybe I'm just an idiot idk. There was a big hole after another drain that I also had to bunny hop atleast 3 times. That was annoying. On the final lap there was a split in the field that I didn't make because I was tail gunning that was kind of frustrating but, that's racing. In the final sprint for 10th was dumb I just followed wheels and I ended up getting 13th because a rider came around me and threw his bike. That was cool though. Overall I'm very happy with this race and really wish I would have raced more this year even tough I race probably 5 times as much as last year. Only one more race left: juniors day out. I'm not racing cross. I really wish I was. I plan on writing more about rides and stuff, so if you actually read this you have more to look forwatd to. I'd like to say thanks for all the help to a few people: Lance Lacy, thanks a bunch for all you've done for me. I wouldn't have had half the season I had without your help and advice.
My parent, thanks a bunch for all the financial support and taking me to races. I couldn't have raced this season with out me.
Mr. Dan thanks for providing the ABRT juniors team with all of your knowledge and organisational skills and such.
Mrs. Lisa, thanks for being the email coordinator person. We wouldn't have even known about races and rides without you.
Sorry if I forgot anyone but thanks a bunch
Nick c

Turkey Day race report

This sunday was Turkey day in september, and it was awesome! I came into this race just hoping I could hang on because I hadn't really trained since before FCCC in july.
So I showed up early on sunday morning at about 830. My race went off at 1015. This year I have really fine tuned my pre race prep so, I just sat in the car and under the tent in the parking lot. I got registered and all that "jazz". Andrew and ryan showed up about an hour and 15 minutes after. I started warming up at about 930 so I could get in 25 to 30 minutes and still have time to change out my rear wheel and do my roll out. After I got off the trainer I took 2 easy laps to check out the course. While I was reconning the course there were 3 ambulances tending to a crash in the race before mine. Not something I want to see when I'm about to race in the rain. So then I got my roll out and had the typical pre race chat with the official. So we started and I settled into a good rhythym I feel after I got used to the course. I would drop off the back alittle in the last corner so I could take it faster and I could make up the gap on the finishing stretch. Then I would cycle around the group of 20. With about 7 laps to go of a 12 lap crit an ncvc junior attacked and I followed we got a small gap which was awesome. I usually can't even stay with the group in juniors races so I was very happy to be doing something not just being pack fill. But that move was short lived as there were no artemis juniors in it. When we were caught steven kendall counter-attacked and I was in the red for a little while there but I stayed with the group. The road conditions were pretty poor at the stevensville turkey day venue. There were drains every 200 feet or so. I kept getting pinned into one about 1/3 of the way through and I kept having to stop pedaling to go over it. I don't know why I didn't learn from my mistakes. Maybe I'm just an idiot idk. There was a big hole after another drain that I also had to bunny hop atleast 3 times. That was annoying. On the final lap there was a split in the field that I didn't make because I was tail gunning that was kind of frustrating but, that's racing. In the final sprint for 10th was dumb I just followed wheels and I ended up getting 13th because a rider came around me and threw his bike. That was cool though. Overall I'm very happy with this race and really wish I would have raced more this year even tough I race probably 5 times as much as last year. Only one more race left: juniors day out. I'm not racing cross. I really wish I was. I plan on writing more about rides and stuff, so if you actually read this you have more to look forwatd to. I'd like to say thanks for all the help to a few people: Lance Lacy, thanks a bunch for all you've done for me. I wouldn't have had half the season I had without your help and advice.
My parent, thanks a bunch for all the financial support and taking me to races. I couldn't have raced this season with out me.
Mr. Dan thanks for providing the ABRT juniors team with all of your knowledge and organisational skills and such.
Mrs. Lisa, thanks for being the email coordinator person. We wouldn't have even known about races and rides without you.
Sorry if I forgot anyone but thanks a bunch
Nick c

FCCC!!!!!

This past weekend was The Tour de FCCC. The Tour de FCCC is a three stage juniors only stage race in allentown pennsylvania. This was my first stage race and to be honest I came into it knowing I wasn't very prepared. The week before I had been on vacation and only had the opportunity to train twice for one hour each time. I got back from vacation late thursday night and left early saturday for pennsylvania. My family and I stayed in room 328 at the comfort Inn about 15 minutes from the time trial and road race venue. On friday night my family and I ate at a restaurant called Bostons. I ordered lasagna and it was blegh but that's beyond the point.

I didn't get much sleep friday night as I was watching Lockup Raw. (Only the greatest show about Mendocino county ever.) so I woke up early on saturday morning so i could indulge in the bountiful feast that was Comfort Inn's continental breakfast. It was lovely! I had taken a drive around the TT/RR course the night before and I knew that it was going to be rough. I think my course reconnaissance only made me nervous. I got to the venue at about 7:15 or so, so I could check in and get my TT start time. During the time while I was waiting for my TT start time Kevin and I got in a lap of the course so we could get a feel for the hills. At 8:30 the TT times were posted and i was set to go off at 9:27. I relaxed for about 20 minutes and this made me nervous because I knew I should have brought my Aero-bars but I didn't I then started to warm up about 40 minutes to shuttle launch(A.K.A. my weak example of a TT). The TT did not go well at all I was hoping for a a sub 12 minute for the 4 mile route but ended up with a 12:40. I was passed 2 times and one was within the first 3 minutes. This was pretty disheartening.

The 15-16 mens road race was set to start with the 17-18 women at 12:32. This left about 3 hours after the TT to go get something to eat. The team and I all went to Cracker Barrel and I got some real breakfast. We showed back up at the venue about an hour early for the Road Race and Aidan and I decided to sit in the car to keep cool. Aidan and I had a few flaws in our race prep because we barely drank any water which was a huge flaw. The road race started slowly but quickly heated up and I soon found myself off the back with a young lady named isabella before the first lap was even over. I rode one more lap at a painfully slow pace and decided to call it quits on the Road Race. I hated myself for dnf-ing but I had to. Aidan dnf-fed one lap later we both didn't drink enough. We watched Kevin race in impressive fashion.

I woke up the next morning thinking I wasn't going to race the crit (even though I dnf-fed the Road Race we were allowed to race the crit with a time of 2 hours for the RR.) just because of nerves but Aidan convinced me to. I am so glad that i decided to race the crit because this had to be one of the most fun races I have ever done. The crit was set to be 20 miles (my longest crit so far). The race stated off pretty fast and I was holding on but having a great time. Aidan attacked with a few other guys which lifted the pace further and I was dropped. I eased off to recover and waited for the pack to come back around so that I could hop back on. I got back on with about 8 laps to go and I held on until the last lap and I finished just behind the pack.

Congrats To Aidan for getting 12th in the crit and congrats to kevin for racing strong all weekend. I will speak for the 3 guys that went up to The Tour de FCCC and say that I hope we can bring more teammates next year and maybe get a good result on GC.

RANDOM INFO:

The 15-16 and 17-18 TT's were both 4.1 miles. Both RR's were 7 laps or 29 miles. The 15-16 crit was 20 miles and the 17-18 crit was 25 miles.

Thanks for reading,

Nick Caddenhead

time for a break

Its time for a break I've been training a lot recently and also recently my legs have strted to feel dead. I don't want this to turn into anything more than temporary dead legs. I will be taking about a week off ill be doing tour de fccc in july I'm pretty pumped about that. Thanks
Nick c

recent thoughts

Sorry for the lack of posting really just haven't had much to talk about. Since last post I have done bike jam. Bike jam was a really hard race and I have discover why I think I'm always off the back. Not a good enough warm-up. I was chasing for the whole race but eventually got lapped. Whatever. I also flatted my rear tubular damn vittoria tires. That was cool I didn't need it again till this weekend which was the church creek tt. Love continental sprinter. But anyway I cut 5 mins off last years time and if I would have manned up and stayed in the aero tuck I could have done even better. Since may 16 I have done a few greenbelts. I usually would just surf the pack in the c race due to the sketchiness. I recently did the b race and still surfed the back but I was way more comfy and it was harder I had to take a lap with 9 in after going into the red to close a gap. I have also upgraded to cat 4 which is exciting and I am feeling stronger on the bike which is also good. Thanks
Nick c
Also I plan to soon buy a helmet cam and upload some race vids but not for a while.
Oh and I did a 4 hour trainer ride because of thunderstorms yesterday. That sucked

Thanks again
Nick c

no post for a while

Sorry for no post in quite some time nothing too exciting has been happening. I crashed in april that's really nbd. I did terribly at bunny hop after training really hard the week before. I got some new shoes. And group rides have been awesome I can feel I'm getting much faster. I will post more often

some real adventures

Last thursday after the davidsonville ride I was talking to some of my teammates and we decided to put in an easy 50 miler on saturday. So I show up at the b and a park and ride and get ready to ride and then we rolled out. First doing the around the river ride and jioning the airport loop. I hate bike trails. So I was feeling good all ride until 3 miles from the finish. Some guy decided to turn around while jogging I guess right in front of me so I nailed him. This made me so angry. It chipped my brand new shifter which is minor but still what an ass. So I recovered from that and all was good. Tuesday was the spinervals dvd shoot which was hard. We did 3 5 minute intervals with 2 minutes rest. Then 2 minuters with 2 rest and the 45 seconds with 1 minute rest. Wednesday I did 2 by 20's with sprints every 5 minutes. Thursday was davidsonville. I felt good but my back hurt. On rte 2 we did fast pacelining and I popped after my third pull I couldn't accelerate at all to get on the back. Later I discover my front brake was rubbing which made me mad. We then took a little break. But I picked it back up on sands and we kept it that way to the finish. It was the fastest d ville ride yet for us. At 19.5 which sounds slow but what can I say we are all cat 5 juniors. Today I went on the around the river ride with aidan and mr ian that was funny nothing too hard at all. Just a fun ride.
Thanks nick c

thursday night jrs ride

So the juniors squad planned on riding from davidsonville 30 minutes before the adults which I thought was odd but I was open to it. My friend robbie who used to be on abrt had a new bike and wanted to ride so he came out. We started off the ride with me on the front down rossback and onto patuxent where robbie started pulling and he pulled for a long time. He started my frustration robbie wanted to get off so he used the standard elbow twitch and for one of my teammates to pull through but I will not name names. No one would pull through! We got across 214 and aidan was pulling so that was good and he pulled for a while but then no one would pull through which made me angry so I went to the front and did some work but then I kept finding just aidan robbie and I at the front. It was frustrating. So we stopped at the gas station because kevin wasn't feelingtoo good. Once onto route 2 we started pace lining so I was on the front first then robbie. Then me again no one would freaking pull!!!!!! Then aidan and mr ian got on the front and they are fast so that was good. A perfect pace. Kevin was otb at this point so he decided to take the short cut so the rest of us went the long way and still (the only person there that I haven't yet mentioned) still wouldn't pull. Which was frutrating me. So we caught back up with kevin and I kept a very easy 20 mph for about 3 miles on bayard and sands. and then the ride was pretty much uneventful except for the fact that my said team mate pulled only 3 times during the ride. We got within about halfmile of the finish line so I went and I hauled for a while with just kevin and aidan I believe with me still. So then I just held it off to the line. Then what really made me angry was when I was keeping it up after the finish mr ian and aidan went to the front which wasn't what made me mad but then I got fropped because of my high effort at the real finish. And then I was with andrew. And he like attacked which made me mad on 2 fronts we were alrwady finished and now all of a sudden he is so strong. Why couldn't he pull during the ride. His attack didn't phase me though. Just thought it was dumb.
Thanks nickc

WALKERSVILLE

As most of you know the tour of walkersville was this weekend. I went into this race to just try and stay with the field. Welll i partially accomplished that. The neutral start and the first lap were really sketch there were 2 pretty bad crashes that i almost went down in. With me representing the ABRT juniors were Andrew, Aidan, and me. We were all closse to the back of the fiels during the neutral start and the first lap. After the last turn on the final lap there was a big crash with 5+ guys in it so me being right at the back got caught behind and so did andrew. I got on a chase group with a guy in a 53x11 kit and i believe and ncvc rider. I stayed with them for the better part of the second lap but they were just too strong so i hopped off to form up another chase group with andrew who was further back. With andrew were all of the juniors besides 3 so we were all working together the whole race. While andrew and i were trying to get the the first finish of our group by some luck all three of the juniors up the road dnf'd. one of them sadly was aidan who was having chain trouble and some how got lost which was disappointing of course. So andrew and i decided to try to lift the pace high after the last turn to try to pop off josh wilcox who was using a lot of energy the whole race. Andrew and i wanted to make sure we got into the final corner first and second so we could break up the group with our acceleration out of the corner. I went hard to get to the corner first and managed that but when i came out of the corner and accelerated hard josh was still there and andrew hard totally not even tried to accelerate like we planned. so i stayed on the front till the final 200 meters still trying to hold a high pace(i know tactical error but what ever) i managed that but with 200 meters to go 4 riders suddenly came around me in full sprint. I was in too high a gear to get it turning over quickly enough so shifted down and started the sprint. I passed a masters 55+ rider on the way to the line and got oh so close to the other 3 riders but couldnt make up the ground. I managed 4th and andrew held off an artemis rider for 5th. I believe that this 4th place finish while it might not seem like much was the confidence boost i needed to keep my focus and keep training for the races ahead. Mr. palmer got third in the cat 5 35+ race. I couldnt be there but aidan was a t tysons this morning and managed a 7th in the 15-18 jr category. Good work man. I also heard Chris brin finished well in the cat 5 race.

livin the good life

I would say one of the best things about being a kid still is our breaks from school. Today is my last day of easter break and I don't really want it to end. You're probably thinking what does this have to do with anything well its nice because theoretically I can go on as many rides as I want not having school. This makes me think that I didn't use my break to its full potential. Lokking back at the week I should have ridden outside more. It really was nice all week. In the beginning of the week I was coming off of a semi dissappointing race weekend at jeff cup so I took monday off. I rode the trainer on tuesday because I had intervals to do and right now that is the most practical way for me to do them because I don't have a hrm or power meter. The next exciting thing was thursday which I already wrote about so no surprise there. What I would really like to write about is saturday. During the week I sent out an email to my junior team companions about wanting to do a race simulataion ride or just going out for some miles I hadn't decided yet. I got some pretty disppointing feedback from the jrs team until later in the week. What really annoys me is I carry myself through the whole team process doing the emails and checking to see if I can do stuff. While other jrs parents do it all for them kind of frustrating when I say to jrs hey want to go on a ride and get responses from parents. I don't know why that bothers me but it does. Turns out only 2 other jrs could ride saturday so it was me aidan and andrew. We left at 9 from the park and ride and set out to do about 40 miles and we did just that we did the 27 miles loop but did the actual loop part 2 times. I thought this was a lot of fn and good training for our races. So some ride data: 40.8 miles, 18.3 mph average it took us about 2h10m. Andrew and aidan are both riding pretty strong but I put the hammer down the last few miles after we crossed back over 214. And I split off andrew until the right back onto rossback and aidan stayed with me most of the time. When we all got back together I went hard over the little rise and split us up for good. Anyone have a powertap they want to sell. And if anyone even reads this. Thanks
Nick c

Thursaday afeternoon ride

On thursday my juniors teammate aidan invieted me over for some bike repair and a ride. I learned that i suck at changing tires which really was a big blow to my self confidence i contemplated suicide but then i got over it. On a more serious note the ride was alot of fun aidan is riding pretty strongly right now. The route we took put us out on the b and a trail and then off on some carzy side road descent and then up a hill back to the trail then we shared taking pulls on the b and a. we ended the day with a bout an hour and 5 minutes and about a8 miles cover it was a good easy day. I am so looking forward to walkersville there are only 5 pre registered juniors and 3 are abrt so this is looking good for the abrt juniors
thanks

Adventures of a junior cyclist

Hello all,

Just set up this blog because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Some randominfo/background on me: Im a junior cyclist on team abrt, I am still in the dreaded cat 5 ranks, this is my second season riding, i hate the trainer yet find myself on it all too often, my favorite part of a given ride would have to be the hardest climbs. Well thats about it on me.

Jeff cup:

This last weekend I took the trip down to charlottesvile Virginia for what for me was the first race of the season. I came to the race thinking that i would just be able to hold onto the back of the junior field and man was i wrong. Well i was semi wrong. The neutral start rolled out at 9:00. The weather was in the low 40's but dry, but that was soon to change. About halfway through the 1st lap the skies opened and then it got pretty rough. on every descent i would fall back to"get a feel" for it little did i know this would be the end of me. On the second lap i came into the turn before the hill in the very back of the field slowed it down a bit much and took the turn realllllly slow here was my mistake i couldnt bring meyself back up to speed fast enough. There started my journey otb. I hate being otb but to be honest at races now im kinda used to it even though this was only my 4th mass start. i was otb for about a lap and a half which sucked and then i got pulled going into my 4 th lap which sucked more. I ended the race pretty disappointed but i now know what i have to work on. Jeff cup was not a complete failure for me.