New Year, New Team

I am currently back in LA after spending a well deserved month back at home in Michigan for Christmas and New Years. I had a lot of fun spending time with my parents and I also got to spend a couple of nights at my cousins. My cousins live about 30 minutes away from me and are brothers to me. We have grown up together and it is  always a great time when we get together.
I flew into LA on Sunday and am staying at a friend's house, Andy Lakatosh, who is a track cyclist training for the Rio 2016 Olympics!!!! Go give his fan page a like on facebook!!! The riding here is amazing, the other day I rode through all of the major beaches. It feels so nice to be in warm weather after it being -20 F in Michigan last week.






I also enrolled in a local college and I am taking two online classes. It is pretty cool to say that I am starting college early.





The most exciting news that I have is that I will be racing for the Hincapie junior development team this year! This is the best team for young riders in the U.S and has a great track record of sending riders onto Pro Tour teams. Our team camp is next month in Greenville, SC and I can't wait to meet everyone. This is a huge step forward for myself and  I am ready to take my cycling to the next level. It feels great to finally see my hard work paying off.


I have a lot of pictures that I want to upload onto here, but the website isn't working that well right now, sorry!
Thanks for reading,
Rainman

Enjoying the Sun

I have been on the road for about two weeks now and I am loving the amazing weather and riding that I have had the opportunity to take advantage of so far. To Sum up the first couple of days in LA, I felt like I was a kid who got thrown into the deep end of the pool and didn't know how to swim. I had been really busy with finishing up high school and I hadn't raced since late July. After the initial shock of the long rides, hot weather, and thousands of feet of climbing every day I began to feel better and better. By the end of the trip I felt great and I could see a huge gain in my fitness. Besides the fact that I suffered a bit in the beginning, the trip was a ton of fun! We got to ride with Phil Gaimon who just signed with Garmin for the upcoming season and we went to a great restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. I found it funny that this was the first year that I lost weight over thanksgiving compared to the usual tradition of eating a ton and passing out later.

 As the last day of camp arrived all of my teammates were packing up to go back home to the frigid Midwest, but I was excited to pack up for Tucson, AZ. Gord Fraser, who directed my team at the Tour de la'Abitbi over the summer and lives in Tucson connected me with his friends who offered to host me for two weeks. These first couple of days in Tucson have been amazing. My host family is super generous and welcoming. They have truly made me feel at home. The riding here is also great. There are bike lanes on all of the roads and there are so many different routes to choose from. I am very confident with how my training is going. I am working very hard and I know that this will be great year for me.I am also really learning about what it takes to take cycling to the next level, everything from eating right to maximizing recovery.

Thanks for reading

Day by Day

It has been too long since my last blog post. Life has been going good and I have been enjoying the beautiful scenery that the fall season in Michigan has to offer. Sadly, the fall weather is turning into the cold and miserable weather that we call winter. This past weekend I finished high school by taking the GED. I lasted two months in public school before I realized that balancing the two proved to be too difficult. Public school was not all that I had hoped it to be. Many of the students at the high school had been together since first grade and had their cliques sorted out. I only had two friends that went there going in and I didn't have classes with either of them. I had trouble "breaking in" to the social scene. Don't get me wrong though, I met many nice people during my time at Franklin and enjoyed being around others my age. I have struggled through all four years of High School battling depression and never being able to participate in the school's activities due to training and travel. The GED offered me a way to end my high school career early and still be able to get into all of the colleges that I am interested in. I will be starting College in January by taking two or three online courses through a local college to start earning credits. I am excited to start a new chapter in my life.

In other news, I am going to LA later this month for a ten day training camp with some fellow friends and teammates. After the training camp, I will fly from LA to Tucson, AZ for two weeks of climbing Mt. Lemmon. I can't wait to be in the Sun and to get some high quality training in. The season's start will be here before I know it.

Thanks for reading,
Richard

Off-Season

Wow, this summer has gone by fast! I had a decent second half of my season with a 20th place in the road nationals time trial and a 22nd place overall at the Tour de l'Abitibi (the largest junior stage race in the world). I flew straight to Pennsylvania from the Tour de l'Abitibi in Quebec to race track nationals and hopefully qualify for the world championships. My legs said different though and apparently they didn't want to race anymore. I can't blame them, I had been racing the whole summer. Sadly my season goal of making it to the world championships was thrown away. After having been on the bike every day of the summer, I only spent 3 days at home from early June to the beginning of August, I decided to end my season early and enjoy the rest of the summer.

Ending my season early turned out to be a blessing in disguise, I was able to take a 10 day vacation with my dad to our cabin in Montana. This trip included a lot of hiking, napping, eating, and swimming at the hot springs down the road. As a younger kid, I would go to my cabin in Montana every summer with my parents, but these past summers I haven't been able to go due to the cycling schedule. Knowing that I will be off into the world next year as a man it meant a lot to be able to have a fun father/son trip.

This past month I have been taking a break from riding the bike in order to give myself a mental and physical break. It feels amazing to play video games and watch a lot of movies, but I am excited to get back to training in a week. There are some very exciting races on my schedule for this upcoming year.

Also, I am starting public school this Tuesday. I started high school at a private all boys school in Detroit, then I became homeschooled these past two years to accommodate cycling better. Homeschooling did not give me the social scene that I needed, so my parents and I worked very hard to transfer me into a public school for my senior year. I am very excited to make new friends and to experience something different. I am super happy that this will be my last year of high school!

That is all the news that I have,
Thanks for reading

Turning A Corner

The first half of my season has not gone well for me, but I think that things are starting to turn around for me. The season started off in Arizona at the Valley of the Sun Stage Race where I flatted early in the road race and then had to drop out later due to heat exhaustion. Besides having some bad races, I was also battling depression. I had no energy to get out of bed and no motivation to do anything. It was hard on my body as my psychiatrist tried to figure out why my medicine wasn't working and what dosage of medicine would work best for me. I felt hopeless.

But I have kept on pushing through and I have weathered the storm. Two weekends ago I went to Iowa to race with my team. I had a great weekend of racing despite crashing at the race where I was hoping to defend my title. I had one of my best races ever that weekend when I finished in the field in the pro race on Sunday. There were about 100 riders in it and many big names were there. It was very fast, but I fought to keep my position throughout the race and I showed that I can compete with the best in the U.S. This was a big moment for me because only 3 years earlier I looked up to these guys and never imagined that I would be on their level someday. Hard work pays off!!!!!!! I also finished second in last nights local race. It feels good to be back on the podium.

During these next two months I will be traveling to Madison, Wisconsin for road nationals, Quebec, Canada for the Tour de la'Abiti, and Pennsylvania for track nationals. I am feeling very strong going into these races and I am expecting big results. I am happy to finally be feeling better! Thanks for reading!

Gotta Love California

This past week I have been in L.A at the Home Depot Center velodrome training for track nationals which take place in Pennsylvania in late July. My goal this year is to qualify for the junior track World Championships by doing well at track nationals. The training consisted of a lot of intervals (hard efforts) and motor pacing (racing behind a motor bike, check out my fb page for video). Besides riding, I went to the beach a couple times and also got to see a stage of the Tour of California, one of America's biggest professional cycling races.

Don't get me wrong, I had a blast on this trip, but I have never felt this tired before. My body is excited to go home tomorrow to get a day or two off.  I gave it my all in every training session. After each workout I got some recovery food in me and then passed out in my hotel room bed. I feel stronger than ever though and I am confident in my ability to have success in my upcoming races.

I have to say that my favorite part of this trip was being able to get coached by Andy Lakatosh, a very high level track sprinter who has accomplished so much in his cycling career and still has bigger goals that he is working towards. He is the nicest guy and I have learned so much from him. The biggest thing that Andy has taught me is to believe in myself and that anything is achievable with sweat, sacrifice, and hard work.

Alright, it's my bed time, thank you for reading! Finally, I would like to thank my awesome mom for taking me on this trip!

Tour of the Battenkill road race

A lot has happened since the Valley of the Sun stage race in Arizona in February. I have been working on school and training a lot. I went back to Arizona a week after the stage race and then one more time over Easter break for the official team training camp where I got to meet all of my teammates and get all of my cool team gear.

This past weekend was the first official team race in Cambridge, New York. The Tour of the Battenkill is a one day road race that is 65 miles long and includes a lot of climbing, gravel roads, and beautiful scenery. This is a big and important race which many juniors show up to. I arrived on Saturday at noon after a ten hour car ride that my family split into two days. I got my number, went for a ride, and then met with my teammates for dinner at a great Mexican restaurant to get some fuel in our bodies and to talk over strategy. After dinner, I went back to my hotel to get a good night's sleep.

The morning of the race was very cold, but it looked as though the sun was going to come out soon. My teammates and I rode to the start line and it was time to go. The race started off very slow and the hills were the only hard parts. Everyone knew that the real action doesn't come until the final hills within the last 7 miles. My teammates were great and set the pace at the front. At mile 40 I saw my chance to try and bridge up to the two man break up the road. I soloed for the next ten miles and I made a decent gap for myself. I only could reach within 25 seconds of the two riders ahead of me though. At mile 51 I got caught by a raging field that was getting ramped up for the finish.

By this time, I only had one teammate left in the group, and I did not have that much energy left inside of myself. My objective now changed to helping him have the best possible chance at taking the win. I went to the front and took pulls with other teams to bring back the breakaway. After a few hard pulls, I was done and the next hill shot me off of the back of the group. I rode in the last 4 miles with six others and got third in the sprint. I finished 18th overall out of 58 starters.

This was a very fun weekend and I am so proud of how my team did. My teammate David Lombardo got sixth in my race! We couldn't have done it without the rest of our teammates. They worked their butts off! I am feeling in great shape and I am excited for the bigger races in July. I would like to thank my parents, ISCorp/Intelligentsia Cycling Team, Trek, Bontrager, Spy sunglasses, and Billy Jones for all of their help and support!