Now that we are already a good portion done with the road racing season, I will not go over my early races with too much detail, but I will briefly go over what I have been doing with my racing this year and what my goals are as far as my future in cyclin goes.
As I'm sure most of you already know, I am still on Hammer Nutrition/ CMG Racing junior elite development team; I have been on this team for three years now and have learned so much from Butch Martin, my racing and training coach. Butch is a two-time Olympian and U.S. Pan-Am Games team member and has 116 career wins. Butch has been coaching since 1974 and was inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame in 2005. Anyways, what I am saying is that Butch knows his stuff and I have learned far more than I can even begin to describe from him. Hammer Nutrition has been our title sponsor ever since I got on the team and they provide us with all our feuling and supplement needs as well as help support our racing adventures throughout the season and make what we do possible. Before I was on Hammer/ CMG Racing Team I was on Vertical Earth- a local racing team in my hometown of Coeur d' Alene, ID. This is where I began racing at the age of 12, and where I picked up a great deal of knowlege about bike racing from my coach there, Mike Gaertner.
I started off training this season around mid-January and at that point it is all just trying to survive the freezing North Idaho weather, but I endured it to the best of my abilities and built my base up. I then started doing more intensity work and some local races. After this, around February and March I start doing mostly single day races throughout the Northwest and a little traveling to California for some stage races. From there, I am pretty much at the start of my heavy section of my racing. This heavy part of racing in my season is generally April and May, and into the end of June for nationals. I do many 3-4 event stage races at this time including Sea Otter Classic, Enumclaw Stage Race, Wenatchee Omnium, and a few others as well as one day races that are closer to home like in Spokane or Western Montana. All this is im preperation for nationals which is my biggest and most important race of the year. I will be racing in the 17-18 men and will be up against 160-170 other kids my age trying to win the stars and stripes jersey just as much as me. This year nationals in Augusta, GA; so I get to race in the unbelievable heat of the south. There are three events at nationals that we compete in: the time trial, criterium, and road race. I am an ok time trialist but it is not my specialty, I am more of a mass start rider so I will ride the tt hard, but look to have good results in the crit and road race. Last year nationals was in Augusta as well since they keep it in the same location for two years, so I already have the courses in my head and know what to expect at least somewhat.
This will be my last year on Hammer/CMG Racing since it is only a junior development team and my hopes for next year are to hopefully get on Hagen Berman cycling team as a U23 racer. They are a very respectable team that hits a lot of the NRC races throughout the year as well as many other big races. They have a lot of very strong riders and I think it would be a good fit for me.
Well now that I have given a little background on my story, I will try to keep my racing and training stories updated on this site, so check back often!
No comments:
Post a Comment