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