Feels Good to be Back

Last post left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I had been off of the bike for months, and once back on, I had been derailed again by a broken wrist. Well I am glad to say that the debacle is now finished, I got my cast off three weeks ago, and have since finally been able to ride outside again.
You never fully realize how awesome it is to ride outside until you only have the ability to ride on the trainer. I am also glad to not have to hair dry my sweaty cast after every ride. I've been back to training for almost a full month now, and I have never been so grateful to finally be back on my bike. I have been hitting the training pretty consistently in preparation for some sweet base blocks as I have been off the bike for so long. Never have I trained so consistently and so motivatedly. Now I'm not setting the world on fire with my 30 hours of sweet zone 1 and 2 rides throughout December but I think it will surely pay off this coming season.
In other news, I registered for the 17 to 18 Battenkill age group, I am still unsure if I will be able to race as I may have other commitments with scouts that weekend, however Battenkill is a great motivator to go put in some hours throughout he winter. I have really realized just how much I miss racing throughout my time back on the bike, I miss the nervous excitement, I miss the amazing feeling after a good result, and the even better feeling if helping a team mate pull off a sweet win. I look forward to seeing everyone soon, and a special thanks to Matt Neigh for being supportive when I was feeling less motivated. Thanks a bunch it meant a lot.
Nick Caddenhead

Been a while!

It's been a while since my last post, now hasn't it? I had a pretty sweet early season this year. Placing top 5 in my first race of the year. Other than that my races were pretty mediocre, i feel like I just started to get the feel for racing this year. As the year grew on I began to feel very tired, but still rode(dumb). I took a few small breaks realizing that i was being dumb, after that I had some pretty successful greenbelts, they were some of my best races this year as I was often very busy on the weekends. Towards the end of summer i began to get very busy and had to take tons of time off the bike, due to long trips to far off lands(Narnia in particular.) After that i found it very difficult to get on the bike, i just didnt' have much motivation. I spent from early August to November doing nothing and getting fat, it sucked. I decided to start training Nov 1 just so i could spend some time getting back to riding. Turns out I'm really good at breaking bones, and broke my wrist in the first week of training, and had to take 2 more weeks off(supposed to be three but I said F_it) So now I have been training for a week and am all over it, even though I can only ride the trainer until tomorrow, hopefully I can get some sweet consistency this winter as I feel that is one of my biggest down falls, being so busy. Expect to see more from me soon.
Nick Caddenhead

Gamjams review: Gloves

I'm relatively new to this whole cycling thing, but in the just over two years I have been riding I have used three, yes that's right three different kinds of gloves. My first gloves were your standard half finger gloves made by castelli. I loved these gloves, they were very ultra comfortable. While comfort is the reason to buy a pair of gloves, I find it annoying to have to pull gloves inside out to remove them. These gloves solved the problem with loops of faux leather in between the fingers that made it easy to pull the gloves straight off. The only other short finger gloves I have had are the ABRT team issue gloves and while I have like these gloves overallthere are a few things that could be changed. These gloves have a nice fit and are very form fitting which I like. The one thing I don't like is the placement of the extra gel cushion they placed on the pinky side of the palm. I have found that this pad if you will has a tendecy to bunch up and move to the saide of my hand where it does absolutely no good. Its not a huge deal. The other thing I don't like is that they are hard to remove. My third pair of gloves are made by Descente and they are my winter gloves. I find these gloves to be very versatile as they have gotten me through the last winter while wearing them in almost all conditions. They are warm and they fit well with a gauntlet style wrist. They also have an extra flap that you can fold over for extra finger protection from the wind. I have never been able to use this though as I feel when my full five finger gloves are turned in to basic mittens that I lose shifting and braking control. Other than that these gloves are great versatile winter gloves.

Thanks for reading,
Nick c

Gamjams Review: Bar Tape

In my realtively short time as a cyclist (two years) I have only use four different varieties of bar tape. One variety of this was made by cinelli and I'm not sure the model name, another two types I have used are made by fizik. These two types are both called mictotex but they are quite different in texture. On my training/crit/bad weather bike I have black fizik microtex tape that has sort of microfiber or suede feel which I like because it soaks up moisture and it more grippy. The other variety of fizik tape I have is also microtex as I mentioned earlier but it is kind of like microtex without the "tex" if you know what I mean. This tape is blue and on my race bike, and I'm not sure if I like it yet as I have been using mainly my other bike since it was installed. What I have noticed though is that this tape cracks easier and it doesn't really absorb any moisture which I'm sure will cause issues on hot summer rides. The fourth type of bar tape I have used came on my race bike when I bought it and it is the bontrager tape which I liked because it had a better vibration damping aspect than the fizik but when I started sweating holding the bars was like walking on ice. This tape was comparable in feel to the cinelli tape but one thing I liked better was that I found that if the bar end ever came out with the cinelli the tape would immediately unravel as there is no adhesive backing. Cinelli was probably my least favorite as it wasn't as cushioney(my word) as bontrager and didn't stay on. My ranking of the four tapes is black fizik(fluffy), bontrager, fizik(slippery), and then cinelli.

MLK Day Ride

Today some of the abrt guys and girls did a "holiday" ride. I was the only junior on the ride which was kind of upsetting yet awesome. We did the reverse of the regular saturday ride which was about 58 miles. The plan was to do a relaxed pace but, sometimes things don't always go as planed now do they? On the ride were Ryan Guttridge, Chris Kick, Alex Pline, Kristin(I'm drawing a blank on her last name, Steve Owens, me, and a couple of other people. This was a somewhat surprisingly low turnout but it was 32 degrees this morning. We rolled out at about 10 and immediately chris kick and I were wondering when the "relaxed" part of this ride was going to happen. Needless to say it never did. Ryan was on the front most of the day riding a moderate tempo he said "I'm just trying to keep everyone moving", in. But anyway I put in a few digs just to get some heat going, and I also traded pulls on the front pretty frequently. When we got to our planned stop(Sweet Sue's) in north beach we realized they were closed on mondays. Instead we went to the dash in which was equally as awesome. Thankfully we didn't spend too much time in the dashin because I didn't want to have to re warm myself. So we were of quickly with a mere 28 miles to go. The ride was rather un eventful up until about ten miles to go where Chris, Alex and I were dropped by ryan as he slowly dieseled away. The ride ended with about 3 hrs and 8 minutes. Pretty awesome ride. One of my favorites. Although it did take me about 30 minutes to get my core temp back to normal. Thanks for a great ride.
Nick c