Jeffrey.bramhall

I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan.

The previous sentence is a major understatement.

So it’s with outright awe that I watched this video of Springsteen’s 9/9/2016 Philadelphia show, where he pulled a kid out of the audience to crush No Surrender with him.     A little background: there’s a part during The Boss’s concerts where he goes around and plucks signs out of the audience for song requests.  On this night,  this guy, Matthew Aucoin, had made a sign that said “Can a college kid play No Surrender with you?”  and he included some notes on his sign about guitar capo placement and chords.   I guess Bruce was convinced, because here’s what happened:

Springsteen took a risk, but he quickly realized that the kid was legit, and traded lyrics and guitar licks with him.   Matt even improvised “Philly” into the lyrics in the last verse.  Impressive.  Then, he comes back onstage to take a selfie with The Boss.

Now, people will say this was “rigged” or “rehearsed.”   Who knows.  I have been to enough Boss shows to believe it was spontaneous.

Amazing.  Here’s another video with the part where Bruce grabs the sign:

-KD

The post No Surrender appeared first on Kid Dynamite's World.

As a kid, every Christmas season I would receive the FAO Schwarz toy catalog. I’m not sure why, but it would come in the mail and then I’d obsess over the many toys it displayed that I would never own. I never got to visit the big store in New...

Edith.  So cute.

Metrics History showing Pmax and FRC in relation to mFTP.  Try to stay awake.

W.

The smaller the blue, the harder Adam stayed on the gas compared to pMax.  Ain't nobody catching that.

It was about this time last year that Melbourne-based cyclist Wade Trevean set off on a two-week solo ride around the island nation of Cuba. Now, a year on, Wade has just returned from his latest solo adventure, this time through Eastern Europe.

After a long holiday with his wife came to a close in Berlin, Wade bought himself a bike, waved goodbye to his wife, then headed east into Poland to begin another eye-opening adventure. The following is the story of Wade Trevean’s three-week ride through Poland, Lithuania and Belarus and the journey of discovery that came with it.

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In setting off on my latest adventure, I was keen to replicate the simplicity of last year’s cycle through Cuba: a ride that involved me, my bike, a daypack, a loose schedule and the inspiring local hospitality. It was a journey that offered insight into the evolving country and some important winter kilometres!

In contrast to my previous trip, the cycling would this time come at the end of my trip with my wife. This meant I wouldn’t be taking a bike over with me but instead purchasing one in Berlin when my wife and I parted ways.

With five bikes already at home I couldn’t justify spending a lot, particularly given I expected to simply give the bike away at the end, as I did in Cuba. My requirements consisted of a large frame to suit my build, true wheels and a fixed gear. Pretty simple.

The renowned Italian frames of yesteryear on display in the Berlin second-hand store were well above my budget (approx AU$600) with only a couple others loosely around this figure. When the bike I eventually chose exceeded this price, my wife suggested I should probably bring it home rather than giving it away.

The selected bike was a local brand, a Kalkhoff, its history documented through its ‘Made in West Germany’ badge. Other characteristics were its single-speed gearing that would quickly turn my amateur climbing pins into those of a local track cyclist. The bike was also white, offering a point of difference to my stock of black bikes.

A beer with a German-based mate (Oliver) in Berlin two days before departure turned into a commitment from him — he would join me in Warsaw, Poland and would ride with me for the first four days. His longest ride prior to the trip was 80km but I did my best to assure him he would be fine. “It’s all in the head,” I explained.

My route was constrained by a three-week window and a desire to see unseen countries. With some time spent looking at maps I decided it was to be a loop through Poland, Lithuania and Belarus; countries that not only shared borders but also a history of war time occupation by German and Russian forces and, in turn, a period of communism.

They also share a love of dumplings. Subconsciously, the latter connection might’ve made the decision for me.

Although plans were vague, the tedious requirements for the Belarusian visa (and correlating sponsorship) meant I had to be fairly accurate with my entry and exit dates. Utilising quieter roads and looking at relevant sized towns for accommodation it seemed if I averaged 150km/day it would be feasible to complete the journey with a day to spare for my flight home. Over a Polish beer and dumplings the night before departure a final look at my individual country maps reassured me the rough early plans were feasible.

The first morning set the pattern for the next few weeks — up with the sun, enjoy a breakfast of muesli combined with local fruits, pack up my meagre possessions then head in a set direction before towns sprang to life and roads became busy. My daypack contained a single change of clothing as an alternative to my ‘formal’ lycra apparel, along with maps, necessary spares for the bike (tubes) and the bare necessities in tools.

Through previous experience I packed light with the assumption that any requirements could be purchased along the way. This was a stark contrast to a previous four-month cycling trip through Africa where, due to the isolation and long sections of desert, I carried everything from a satellite phone to a constant five litres of water.

Our departure point in Warsaw was the Palace of Culture and Science, an iconic building and one of the many examples of ‘subtle’ Russian architecture seen throughout the trip. Our route out of the capital aimed to keep us to quieter roads that often ran parallel to the single-lane freeways. This approach at times made the route resemble the tacking course of a sailing boat as we tried our best to follow a direct alternative course.

The first day blew Oliver’s largest day on the bike out of the water, with a total of 156km nearly doubling it. He did well. The distances didn’t change too much for his four days of cycling, allowing him some insight into his capabilities on the bike.

His commitment was spurred on by some repetitive (and probably annoying) words of support, sucking wheels and 10-minute rests (naps) in the towns we passed through. The days weren’t rushed — as long as we got to the intended destination by dark all was well and allowed exploration of the towns along the way.

The villages offered many highlights throughout the trip, each being a beacon to reach, the next one continually aimed for as the kilometres slowly ticked over. Each offered a reward of its own whether it was the chance to try a local dish, the opportunity to attempt engagement with the locals, or a simple change of scenery.

The northern villages of Poland were all quite beautiful, allowing reminders of small English towns with their once-main roads dissecting the towns, the doorsteps of the houses and shops literally on road’s edge. Most offered their own interpretations of a town square featuring a shaded seat to watch the activities of the town, or indulge in a book accompanied by tuna rolls for lunch.

Most days this lunch break came around 12pm having done 100km. This constituted the bulk of the day’s distance covered, providing a psychological advantage going into the afternoon. Days either featured a slower pace with numerous breaks to appreciate the Polish vistas, or a more time-trial-like tempo to arrive as early as possible at the next destination, allowing plenty of time for exploring.

The crossing of the border into Lithuania featured nothing more than a sign and a cluster of empty buildings, dashing my hopes of a stamp for my storybook passport. Having previously spent time in pre-EU Eastern Europe, border crossings back then were a defined ritual of process and patience — being dropped at the border with proof of visas at each country then long walks across ‘no man’s land’ before waiting for transport, the arrival of which felt more like a victory than a bland delivery of the public service.

Though tiresome at times this ritual certainly emphasised the significance of a border crossing, one that required an attempt at another language and a new currency. The Polish ‘come again’ and ‘welcome to Lithuania’ signs didn’t seem to offer that same experience this time around. Still, they did offer the excitement of a new country to explore.

The route in Lithuania was northwest to get to Šiauliai and then east towards the capital Vilnius, all while avoiding the tempting signs towards Kaliningrad in Russia.

Accommodation options became limited, the most common option being a “B&B” where an elderly couple would commonly vacate their house for the night. Hospitality was culturally limited with stern looks and short responses to our basic shared languages.

After a previous trip through Russia, I was comfortable with a blank look in response to my earnest smiles. It was explained that a sign of positive emotion during communist times revealed too much and therefore minimal expressions were preferred. Importantly, each place I stayed featured the simple necessities of a bed and a secure place for my bike.

Šiauliai was the first town that offered a well-known tourist attraction, a hill that featured thousands of religious crosses of varying interpretations placed as a shrine to anti-communism during Soviet occupation. It was also the end for Oliver as he was booked on a flight back to Berlin. It was good having some company for the first few days, considering that the next few weeks would be solo.

Silence was broken on the day after Oliver’s departure with conversations to myself and one of the loudest storms I’ve experienced, the latter amplified by an exploding telephone pole only 50 metres in front of me. Fortunately this climatic experience was a rarity with the European summer only delivering rain a handful of times on the trip.

The ride into the capital, Vilnius, was a short one. The goal: to spend the afternoon taking in the sites and sneaking in some vital laundry. Thankfully it was a short ride as I noticed very quickly that I had broken not one but two spokes. And then two quickly became four.

Being void of spares or tools — I had assumed the new wheel I bought in Warsaw would hold up — and being a long way from a suitable shop, I laced the spokes together and took the main road in case an alternative form of transport was required.

I made it to Vilnius, however, where new spokes were quickly obtained (along with chain whip and spoke key). Having previously built wheels, I knew it wasn’t a huge hassle to replace the now-fixed spokes, but I was still trying my best to avoid it happening again. Given the minimal weight on the bike and the fact I’d been conscious of avoiding rough surfaces as much as possible, it seemed the spokes had snapped when climbing, perhaps while out of the saddle pushing the 52×16 fixed gear.

I remained seated for any future climbs. Fortunately, there were no more broken spokes nor any other mechanical for the remainder of the trip. Not even a single puncture. It made me question the added weight of spare tubes for the next trip!

Vilnius provided a nice opportunity to get off the bike, to play the part of a pedestrian tourist. It was a pattern I repeated several times throughout the trip, assuming the town I was in offered enough of an incentive for further exploration beyond its sole street. Rest days were often filled with time at local museums, refuelling and utilising the longer hours of summer and the associated local cultural events. Despite the appeals of the larger cities it never took too long until the yearning to keep cycling returned.

If the visa requirements were anything to go by, the border crossing into Belarus was going to be more memorable than coming into Lithuania. Exiting the EU was fairly simple — it was the entry that offered the experience, with the Belarusian guards laughing at the combination of an Australian passport and my means of transport.

When the guards caught their breath my visas and support letters were checked and I was waved through, passing the usual long line of vehicles synonymous with disjointed borders. The humour upon my arrival and the general lack of tourists throughout the country did make me question whether I was the only Australian in the country, let alone the only Australian in the country on a bike.

The entry into Belarus made it clear this was a country of significance difference: the car-free roads (they were stuck at the border), the change of written language to Cyrillic, and a currency that offered considerable confusion. A combination of old and new rubles is in circulation in Belarus, the latter having had three zeros removed (i.e. 13,000 to 13) due to apparent recent prosperity. On the plus side it allowed some opportunities to practise my maths.

No money for the first day didn’t amount to stress — I thought all would be ok and that the locals would assist where required. Fortunately water was free — I used my Steripen water purifier at local sources whether from locals’ kitchen taps or village wells.

Days in Belarus allowed time to watch a town start its day, sitting as the sun rose and people headed off to work. Some towns were so small that their entry and exit signs seemed to be aligned, while others offered some scale that encouraged exploration beyond the main street.

At the end of the day the lack of TripAdvisor presence for most towns meant sourcing a bed for the night was a priority. Many of the hotels clung to their communist past with service that seemingly wasn’t interested in your business, despite being empty. This probably wasn’t helped when my bike inevitably following me into my room.

Once a hotel was found there was the necessary registration including proof of travel insurance, greeting the individual worker of each floor employed to assist the local employment figures, and hopelessly seeing if the room’s black and white television had any English channels. Fortunately the prices also reflected the historic times.

Walking the streets uncovered Belarus’ ever-present connection with Russia, from the committee-designed Ladas, the numerous references of its win in the ‘patriotic’ war, to the grandiose pastel-coloured architecture. Whether in city apartments blocks or regional stand-alone houses, the dwellings commonly mirrored nearby buildings, an historic approach to ensuring all in the community had a shared status.

The one restaurant in town typically required no booking, as most of the time it was only myself and a troop of four ever-changing waiters. Food was ordered through some very haphazard translation, mostly resulting in several ‘house specials’ being presented. Having long days on the bike made it much easier to finish off the three or four courses that commonly came out.

With dinner finished, the early morning starts easily justified daylight bed hours, but I resisted, instead preferring further time spent in the town squares. I sat between the locals and their popular statues of Lenin and other notable figures, reading some relevant Russian literature, happily distracted by the comings and goings of the community. These were quiet towns.

With a rest day coming up in Belarus I toyed with the idea of extending a day’s riding, thereby allowing for an early arrival into the more popular border town of Brest. This extension pushed out the planned 150km to 230km for the day. Taking a risk, I assumed the size of the dot on my paper map translated to a town that would include at least one hotel.

My experience of riding a fixed-gear bike around Cuba generated the assumption that 190km a day would be enough, but it seems one can go that little bit further. On a full day like this it’s incredible the ups and downs the body and mind deals with. One can feel heavy legs and a lack of enthusiasm at the mid-way mark, before it all turns to bliss in the final 50km. Perhaps it was the eventual smooth roads (which I praised some road workers for) or the ability to sit behind a horse and cart for a few km. It all helps!

Finally arriving in town after that long day, and after a bit of searching and some nodding from locals, it seemed my gamble paid off: there was indeed one hotel in town.

I was anticipating a complicated crossing from Belarus back into Poland so I made an early start, reaching the border by 6am. Passing all of the local cars for the front of the queue I wasn’t greeted with positive reactions but with process and the need for patience. Eventually I got an explanation from a senior officer: no bikes were allowed across the border and my only option was to ride back up to my entry point at Lithuania. This wasn’t the plan.

Despite numerous pleas (outside of a bribe) I simply couldn’t get a yes. As I rode away from the border I started to ask the drivers in the queue whether anyone would be willing to drive the bike and I across. This exercise in patience honed my comprehension of the local word for “no”.

Eventually a Russian couple (Ilya and Katia) took pity on my desperate appearance and helped load my bike into their car, grease stains and all. Four hours later, with my nostalgic thirst for epic communist-era border crossings quenched, I was back in the EU.

My final days in Poland offered more touring cyclists, more normal architecture and more palatable vodka. They also provided three days of headwinds that were seemingly keen to push me back to Lithuania. These are the days that offer the cyclist a mental test. But with a compressed timeline and my final destination looming, there were no real choices (besides the unfathomable public transport!).

After 2,100km of riding, I reached Krakow. There was certainly no fanfare waiting for me, just a simple sign, busy roads and constant rain — the weather possibly preparing me for my return to Melbourne.

At times it was easy to forget the fortune of being on a holiday amid the challenge of completing each day’s ride. But the harder days on the bike were quickly forgotten as I briefly looked into doing a U-turn and entering Ukraine to extend the odyssey. But all good things must come to an end and in my experience it’s much easier to plan the next trip from home.

Having again completed this simpler form of touring I am keen to embark on other, similar trips. I’m not ruling out another continent-crossing journey — as I did in Africa — but for shorter timelines, this simple approach still allows the infectious joy of cycling and the mental challenges of covering long distances, all coupled with the adventure of discovering new places.

Photo gallery

Often forgotten in favor of push presses or jerks, the bench press can add variety to CrossFit workouts.

On April 22, 2004, Lynne Pitts followed her normal routine. She woke up and logged onto CrossFit.com to see the workout of the day.

The day’s challenge was 5 rounds for max reps of body-weight bench presses and pull-ups. When she saw the workout, Pitts knew she’d do well.

A competitive powerlifter in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Pitts discovered CrossFit in 2003. She started doing the workouts in her garage gym in New Hampshire and began posting her results. Back then only about five to 10 people posted each day. Two of her favorite movements were the bench press—she once had a double-body-weight bench press—and the pull-up.

“It was wake up, hop on the computer and find the workout,” she said. “I was like, ‘Holy cow, it’s perfect!’” Pitts said.

“Body-weight bench press—I’m a really good bench presser,” she said. “And pull-ups ... and I’m a really good puller-upper.”

Pitts did the workout that day and posted a score of 77 bench presses at 115 lb. and 95 pull-ups, hitting a PR of 30 pull-ups in a row in the first round.

Pitts posted her score at 5:13 p.m., and at 8:11 p.m. Greg Glassman, Founder and CEO of CrossFit Inc., commented under the name “Coach”: “Congratulations, Lynne! This workout will bear your name from here on!”

“I smiled from ear to ear, did a happy dance around. It was so cool,” said Pitts, who has worked for CrossFit Inc. since 2004.

“It’s got two of my favorite things, and the best thing of all—and this leads to a later controversy—no time component,” Pitts said.

CrossFit Founder and CEO Greg Glassman with Lynne Pitts.

She said what she calls the “Santa Cruz Lynne” is different.

“There’s a video with Brendan Gilliam doing Lynne as a couplet. As much rest as you wanted between couplets, but back-to-back bench press and pull-ups. And then, because it was a video, that became doctrinal. And there was actually debate—and there might still be debate—whether you have to do Lynne as a couplet,” she said.

The bench press is sometimes used for strength work in CrossFit, but it’s less frequently programmed as part of a conditioning workout. One of the biggest reasons is space and equipment: A class of 20 people would require 20 benches and 20 places to rack the bar. (As you’ll see below, several clever affiliates have gotten around this by using the bench press as part of a partner workout.)

The other reason bench press is less common in CrossFit is because the focus on functional movement leads many gyms to emphasize the push press, press, jerk and dip. As Bill Starr pointed out in “The Role of Bench Press in Strength Training,” Olympic lifters have historically avoided benching because pectoral muscles don’t play much of a role in overhead lifting. He also noted it was generally accepted that bench pressing could decrease shoulder flexibility, which is key to weightlifting. However, as Starr argued in the article, the bench works the deltoids and the triceps, both of which are used in pressing and jerking.

Pitts said another advantage of the bench press is it’s familiar to people coming from other sports and athletic backgrounds.

“It’s like a known standard metric, but the way we do it is still non-traditional, like body weight for high reps. You don’t see that in weight-training bodybuilding football-type workouts,” said Pitts, who is now CrossFit’s Senior Operations Manager.

If you rarely bench press in your CrossFit training, grab a bench, lower the J-hooks, and give one of these workouts a try.

10 Bench Press Workouts

1. Lynne

5 rounds for max reps of:
Body-weight bench presses
Pull-ups

(No time limit. Count reps for each exercise in all rounds.)

2. Linda (aka 3 Bars of Death)

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps for time of:
1.5 body-weight deadlifts
Body-weight bench presses
.75 body-weight cleans

3. Hero Workout JBo

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jeremie “JBo” “Bubba” Border, 28, of Mesquite, Texas, assigned to the 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), based in Torii Station, Okinawa, Japan, died Sept. 1, 2012, in Batur Village, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with small-arms fire.

As many rounds as possible in 28 minutes of:
9 overhead squats (115 lb.)
1 15-foot legless rope climb beginning from seated
12 bench presses (115 lb.)

4. Hero Workout Coffey

U.S. Marine Cpl. Keaton G. Coffey, 22, of Boring, Oregon, assigned to the 1st Law Enforcement Battalion, 1st Marine Headquarters Group, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, based in Camp Pendleton, California, was killed on May 24, 2012, while conducting combat operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

For time:
Run 800 meters
50 back squats (135 lb.)
50 bench presses (135 lb.)
Run 800 meters
35 back squats (135 lb.)
35 bench presses (135 lb.)
Run 800 meters
20 back squats (135 lb.)
20 bench presses (135 lb.)
Run 800 meters
1 muscle-up

5. CrossFit Krypton—Jan. 9, 2013

5 rounds for time of:
5 bench presses (no weight specified)
50 double-unders
5 muscle-ups
Rest 1 minute

6. Project Mayhem—Dec. 12, 2013

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of:
Bench presses (205 lb.)
10 pull-ups between sets of bench presses

Watch Rich Froning do this workout.

7. Narrows CrossFit—July 26, 2016

In teams of 2, 3 rounds for total reps of:
Run 200 meters
Max-effort strict pull-ups
Run 200 meters
Max-effort body-weight bench presses

(One partner does an entire round while the other spots and counts reps, then they switch. Each partner competes 3 entire rounds. No time element.)

8. CrossFit Linchpin—Jan. 24, 2015

5 rounds for time of:
15 bench presses (135/85 lb.)
15 toes-to-bars
45 air squats

9. CrossFit Tribeca—Sept. 19, 2014

5 rounds for time of:
Row 500 meters
15 bench presses (135/95 lb.)

10. Elizabeth-ish—Reebok CrossFit One—July 22, 2016

In teams of 2, 45-30-15 reps of:
Bench presses (135/95 lb.)
Power cleans (135/95 lb.)

About the Author: Hilary Achauer is a freelance writer and editor specializing in health and wellness content. In addition to writing articles, online content, blogs and newsletters, Hilary writes for the CrossFit Journal. To contact her, visit hilaryachauer.com.

Photo credits (in order): Courtesy of Lynne Pitts, John Maguire, Nick Roush

I like to think I'm  fairly transparent individual.

I say what I mean, and mean what I say.  I still try (and sometimes fail) to adhere to doing and saying things I believe are the "right" things I should say and do.  After all, once you say something or do something, it becomes cemented in time.  You cannot rewrite history, and your past is indestructible.

Living in it can cause a great deal of angst, and anxiety.  Trust me, I've traversed that road and it's not one worth traveling down.  I'm not suggesting that you take on the attitude of "oh, who gives a shit what I did/said", I'm just saying that there's a better attitude to immerse yourself in that leads to a better version of yourself, than an attitude that keeps you muddled up in personal victimization.

I'd like to believe that the people who know me best can attest to the fact that I am transparent, and do my best to try and love and support them to the very best of my ability.  That's generally a goal of mine, and one I work towards each and everyday in order to make my own life better.

I think it's hard to be terribly unhappy doing your best to love people to the very best of your ability.  Because after all, if you squeeze and orange, what comes out of it?  Orange juice.  If what you're giving out each day to people closest to you is love, empathy, and kindness, then it kinda means those are the traits dwelling the strongest inside of you.  You can't give something to people you aren't in possession of, after all.

This doesn't mean there isn't a caveat to all of this.  Because there is.  And it's about what and whom you're giving those emotional investments to.

From a very pragmatic standpoint, if I have a million dollars, and I keep investing it into stocks that I clearly see are declining in worth, and spend time researching them, KNOWING that the chances of my investments being lost makes me well, kinda stupid.

I like to think of our positive virtues in a similar fashion.  We've only got so much love to give.  And we have different types of love investments as well.  The way I love cinnamon rolls is obviously vastly different than the way I love my kids.  I love training.  I love what it gives back to me in regards to health, how I look and how I feel.

So love itself cannot be encompassed into some singular idea because it's dynamic in nature.  There's different kinds of love, and different amounts of investments we have inside of us for the things we choose to give it to.

Just because I love cinnamon rolls doesn't mean I'm going to eat them everyday.  But I will wake up and choose to love my kids to the best of my ability all the time.

If I loved cinnamon rolls the way I love my kids, it would eventually detract from my quality of life.  I'd get fat, feel like shit, look like shit, and my quality of life would decline immensely.

Where if I love my kids, there will be times of disappointments and suffering, the return on that investment improves the quality of my life a million fold.

This last month of my life has been filled with tremendous adversity.  Possibly more than any other month of my life.  I've been open about that because as noted, I try to be transparent, and write about it because well, I'm an average dude.  And I think all us "average dudes" probably go through a lot of the same things, and suffer in a lot of the same ways, and search for answers and clues as to what to do with our life while mired in the mess of things.

I've worked exceptionally hard to try and keep a positive mindset despite all of this.  Because I've lived long enough to know that no matter how hard the path we're currently walking down is, at some point the road does clear, becomes smooth underneath our feet, and....at least for a while...offers us a reprieve.

One of the greatest parts about arriving at the "smooth in the road" is our ability to appreciate it.  To really inhale how great it truly feels, and just how glad we are to have arrived there.  To turn and look back, and say goodbye to the road behind us.  That we survived, and that in doing so, learned something.  Whether that be all the things we know we want in our life, or don't want in our life, it probably served some purpose that, if we let it, can help us immensely.

But just like eating or not eating cinnamon rolls everyday, a huge part of actually getting off of the path that shreds the flesh from bone on the soles of our feet.....is choice.  We simply decide not to eat cinnamon rolls all day long.  And we simply decide we no longer want to walk down that path.

This doesn't mean it immediately happens.  But it certainly won't ever happen if don't make a choice to stop walking down it.

And because my writing is long and drawn out most of the time, I will do my best to condense some of this and tell you that I actually am going someplace with the orange juice, emotional investments, and "roads we don't want to travel" metaphors here.

And that is this - often times, in fact maybe all the time, the reason we begin to fail in our efforts to find ourselves in the place we want to be, is because we refuse to actually remove others from that environment.

And that environment, is toxicity.

Have you ever known someone, who used to be something?

They used to be happy, or they used to be endearing, full of life and passion...or they used to be a friend that was there through any situation to help you.  They used to make you feel loved, or that you mattered in their life.

Notice I asked if you knew someone that "used" to be something?

Because now, they aren't those things anymore.



Maybe that person is you.  Maybe it's not.  I don't know.  I'm not all knowing.  Hell, I barely know where I put my car keys half the time.  That's always a fun time of day when I know I have to pick the girls up from school and I can't find my keys and I get this semi panicky feeling of "OMG my girls will be stuck at school for the rest of their life!"  Of course I find them, and manage to accomplish my goal.

The last few days, I happened to end up reading a lot about toxic people, toxic relationships, toxic families.  Toxic everything.

Funny enough, the fitness industry is loaded with "detox" methods for your physical body (which are all bullshit of course), but the one NON BULLSHIT version of detoxing, that really works, is the removal of toxic people, relationships, and toxic behavior in your own life.

If you want to find a higher quality of life, better health, a better sense of well being, and better "you" overall, then stop looking for pills or powders or diets that are going to do that.  And start with detoxing your life by spitting out the poison that is killing you emotionally, spiritually, and even physically (stress), on a daily basis.

The one that is causing you to sink all of those millions of dollars into stocks that are crashing, and will end up sucking you dry, and leaving you broke.  And that's most often the word you will find from people who have been stuck in suffering for too long because they refuse to rid themselves of these "bad investments".

"I just feel broken."

Because you are.  Emotionally, you become broke.  There's nothing left to give.

When your ability to invest in people with all of those dynamic versions of love and sincerity have been depleted, what is it that's left for people to squeeze out of you at that point?

Bitterness.  Apathy.  Discontent.  Anger.  Cynicism.

In all the articles I read about toxic relationships and such, only one addressed this very issue.  That the longer you stay in those toxic environments, the more toxic YOU BECOME.  I think this got lost in so many of the other articles because most often, people like to victimize themselves in bad situations without taking a long hard look at who they have become, and wonder if they too have simply "meshed" into the environment around them.  Because that really is most often the case.  And when you arrive at your own place of personal toxicity, there will be things that happen that should be obvious to you, that you have now become part of the very problem you're complaining about.

The friends you used to have, no longer want to be around you.

People tend to see you as unhappy all the time.

Your thoughts are consistently filled with negativity, and it becomes manifested in your words and actions.

Everything that happens to you, you take personally.

You consistently see yourself as being the victim, when in all reality you've made yourself one by refusing to make a choice not to be.

You've become toxic.  You're now part of all of those "toxic relationships" you read about, that is apparently, ruining your life.  Perhaps, some self accountability is in order here in that, the whole reason you "became someone else" is because you simply became just like the toxic people you kept within your circle.

That's generally how it works.  What's that saying........

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."

Now this doesn't mean all five people are toxic.  The odds are that are well, pretty slim.  But it is likely, that the longer you keep the toxic people in your life, one of those five people will remove themselves from your circle, because they are aware of removing toxic attitudes, words, actions, and people in their life and don't want it.  In essence, they were the ones that made the choice NOT to stay confined within that toxic environment.

And upon reading through all of these articles, the most common place they all kept coming back to for most people....was family.

California psychologist Sherrie Campbell, author of the book “Loving Yourself : The Mastery of Being Your Own Person.” wrote about this, and the fact that cutting ties with family is often the hardest thing to do, but if they indeed are the root cause of the toxicity in your life, then it's imperative to do so in you actually want to start improving the quality of said life.
Campbell's 7 reasons to terminate relationships with family:

1. When the relationship is based in any kind of abuse, mentally, physically, sexually, verbally or emotionally. When the relationship is based in manipulation, overt or covert, you can be sure you are being used and abused. When you are living in constant anxiety never knowing or being able to predict how any engagement is going to turn out, it is time to love yourself enough to let go.

2. It is time to terminate a relationship when the only contact you have with them is negative. The contact you have with them serves to bring you down, put you down and/or make you feel you are not good enough, or you haven't done enough for them.

3. When the relationship creates so much stress that it affects the important areas of your life at work, home or both. When your emotions are totally caught up in defending yourself and wanting to explain yourself and the chaos of your relationships with these people is all you talk about, it is time to let go.

4. If you find yourself obsessed with the gossip about you and trying to right wrong information, and you are constantly being ostracized to the point you are losing sleep over it, you are becoming poisoned with their toxicity. Gossip only serves one family member to get others to gang up on you and you are left defenseless against the false beliefs about you being thrown your way. There is usually a ring leader gathering the troops for the assault and because they are joined together, you begin to wonder whether it is you that is the problem.

5. When the relationship is completely all about the other person and there is no real reason why the other person cannot make any effort toward the health and maintenance of the relationship with you. One sided relationships are set up for your failure. When you realize there is never going to be an "enough" place for you to reach in the relationship, you need to let go and start to focus on your own healing.

6. When and whether the relationship is only about borrowing or needing money.

7. When crazy-making, no-win games dominate the relationship such as the silent treatment, blame-games, no-win arguments that spin around on you, there is no point in continuing in this battle. Verbal warfare is never the place you will convince them of anything and these kinds of verbal interactions are set up to be their way or the highway. If these are the negative consequences you receive each time this person or people don't get their way, it is time to let go.

When I talk to cyclists about riding in Los Angeles I’m almost always asked, “What about all the traffic?” It’s true, traffic and LA go together like peanut butter and jelly, but not nearly as sweet. However, it’s not the first thing that comes to mind of when I think about the LA riding scene. Believe it or not, the traffic is even avoidable if you’re not afraid to get dirty. You just need to know about a few westside shortcuts in order to dodge the infamous Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) altogether and find an abundance of panoramic views, twisty mountain roads, and more than a few characters.

My favorite not-so-short short-cut is the Sullivan Canyon fire road. After meandering through hilly Santa Monica neighborhoods filled with Teslas and architecturally significant homes, you hit a rugged road of busted concrete that’s virtually never inhabited by cars. Back in these canyons you’ll come across an old Nazi sympathizer camp that was just recently demolished, only remnants of graffiti and chain-link remain. And when coastal fog rolls in between dusty hilltops, my friends and I have taken to calling this eerily quiet stretch of road “Zombies”, because even though you are just a stone’s throw from the dense city, you get the feeling that nothing exists back here but you and a few scrappy lizards scurrying beneath the brush.

Duck behind a yellow gate and you’re on Sullivan Ridge Fire Road, a steep gravelly climb a few miles long that takes you to the abandoned Nike Missile Tower. On a clear day, you can see all the way to the islands of Catalina or even the peaks of Mt. Baldy on the eastside of LA. From there, you fly downhill over ruts and sandy patches, maybe even hopping onto the singletrack running alongside the main road and end up in Calabasas – the heart of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Once you’re in the mountains the routes are endless – Stunt Canyon, Latigo, Encinal. You can zigzag between the Valley and the coast all day long depending on how far north you want to travel and how many hours of sunlight are in the day. Racking up over 10,000’ of climbing without doubling up on a single climb is completely in the realm of possibility.

But my favorite climb of them all is Piuma. It’s the only climb that doesn’t connect the valley to the coast, so over the years I’ve found it to be the most quiet. The twists and turns give you a variety of vistas, from long expanses across the dense city to dramatic views of the coastline below.

About halfway up there is a small hiking trail that leads to an ultra-quiet lookout. If you’re not in a hurry, it’s the perfect spot for some R&R. My guess is that most cyclists are so focused on reaching the top that few even know about this hidden gem which makes this secret hideaway all the more special.

If PCH epitomizes the slick Los Angeles entertainment culture with flashy convertibles, blonde hair, bikini-clad women, and selfie-sticks; Mulholland is the Wild West. A sister road that parallels PCH on the valley side of the mountains, Mulholland is home to motorcycle gangs, car clubs, and on any given weekend, groups of regular folk gathered along the side of the road checking out the parade of classic cars and motorcycle riders doing tricks for photographers that religiously document the spectacle. Bomb down the Rock Store climb and you’re guaranteed your own photo-worthy thrills as the road swoops and free-falls like a rollercoaster. Those same roadside photographers will even capture that stomach-in-your-throat, no-hands expression of joy/excitement/fear just like the amusement park snapshots of your youth.

Mulholland runs the full length of the mountain range and the rolling terrain will catch up with you if you’re not careful. About halfway through, you’ll stumble upon old western film sets at Paramount Ranch, or a restaurant called The Old Place that used to be a favorite hangout for Harley aficionados and Hell’s Angeles that owned the mountains long before the homes of Justin Bieber and the Kardasians came to be. The original owners have since move on, but if you catch their son in a talkative mood he has some stories to tell! And if you’re really lucky, you may even meet one of the wild peacocks that patrol the area.

What I’ve come to love about riding on the Westside of LA is the variety. Whether you’re in the mood for flat miles and coastal breezes, dirt adventures, or big vistas and big elevation, you can find it not far from home. That’s why, after years of traversing the same roads more times than I can count, these roads never get old.

Want to try the route for yourself? Here’s Hannon’s Strava route.

 

Giant Alpecin’s Tobias Ludvigsson may not be a famous cyclocrosser like his teammate Lars van der Haar, but he’s certainly got some impressive bike handling skills.

Ludvigsson is currently racing the Vuelta. Recently when discarded a water bottle got in his way, he utilized some impressive bike handling skills to not only avoid the bottle but prevent it from harming others. See the far back right in this short video:

Bike handling skills on point @tludvigsson #LV2016 pic.twitter.com/0SuSEH41bf

— CyclingHub (@CyclingHubTV) August 29, 2016

Water bottles or other hand-up materials can certainly be dangerous and cause crashes even on a cyclocross course, making this skill potentially handy this season. Consider adding it to your cyclocross practice, but at your own risk.

Want more? See more cyclocross videos here.

The post Video: Bike Skills for When Hand-Ups Get in the Way appeared first on Cyclocross Magazine - Cyclocross News, Races, Bikes, Photos, Videos.

Boa shoe closures were little more than curious oddities when they first found their way on to cycling footwear in 2003. More than a decade later, they’re arguably the system to have for high-end footwear – such as Giro’s new Factor Techlace – and the reel-and-cable device is also branching out beyond shoes, like in Silca’s clever new tool roll.

Boa may practically be a household name today (provided your house is filled with cyclists), but as is so often the case, it hardly started out that way.

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Annoyance is the mother of invention

Boa was the brainchild of Gary Hammerslag, who together with his father, developed a coronary guide wire system for angioplasty balloon catheters. After eventually selling that company, Hammerslag relocated with his family from southern California to more picturesque Steamboat Springs, Colorado, tending to his younger kids and looking for his next big idea – and frustrated at the primitive lacing systems used on their hockey skates and snowboard boots.

Surely, he thought, there was a better way.

“I was actively looking for a new business, and it was too late to get a job!” he told CyclingTips. “I was a skier, but my kids were 8 and 10, and they didn’t want to learn to ski. But snowboarding was still kind of new, and they said they wanted to snowboard. So I said, ‘Well shit, let’s do it — and I’ll learn with you!’ So I went out and bought three snowboards and three sets of boots. They also started playing ice hockey at that time.

“I was surrounded by these heavy sport boots and realizing that shoelace closures didn’t work well for a variety of reasons,” he continued. “Just out of interest, I analyzed shoelaces and why they were used, why they don’t put buckles on snowboard boots and hockey skates. The basic idea came to me fairly quickly of using shoelaces that don’t rely on friction at the eyelets.

“I already knew how strong and flexible you could get thin wires, and how you could use low friction to tighten the whole boot, all at once. The reel came after that, because when you pull wires, you can’t tie them in a knot — you need a mechanism to pull the low-friction system tight. I was already working on another coronary catheter, and some of those principles were similar to what I was doing with coronary guide wires.”

As a career inventor, Hammerslag already knew a number of machinists and designers that could assist him with the development work. He had prototypes of his reel-and-cable device made in 1997, and then put them on his own snowboard boots just to prove the concept.

“I kept refining it, and reached a point in 1998. I had to choose which product to continue with: the coronary catheter, or what became the Boa system.”

Boa gains a foothold

We all already know now which direction Hammerslag chose, and it also didn’t take long for him to envision the system’s potential.

“A lot of other footwear has inadequate closure,” he said. “The disadvantages of shoelaces extends into other types of footwear. I was also a recreational cyclist — just casual rides, not on a competitive level — and I could see bike shoes also needing good closure. I thought our system would be better there, too.”

Interestingly, Hammerslag’s original business idea was to start a complete shoe company centered around the Boa system. However, he realized early on that building a Boa-equipped shoe company from the ground up would be a monumentally challenging undertaking. After all, he’d be competing against brands that had been in the game for decades, along with all the technical, manufacturing, and logistical advantages such a head start provides.

So later that year, Hammerslag made the fateful decision to shift gears, positioning Boa not as a complete shoe company but as more of an OEM supplier.

“Originally my idea was to start a business making snowboard boots to start, and then go into other areas of footwear. But I had a hard time making the numbers work, and began to appreciate how difficult those businesses are. So the business model concept that I eventually ended up with is more similar to SRAM and Shimano, and before that, Campagnolo, and that was selling components: to sell just the reels, on an OEM basis, and become an expert just in closure, with the dials, and the laces, and the lace guides. That was a pivotal decision.”

And a smart one, as history would soon prove.

Snowboard brands K2 and Vans were the first snowboard boot brands to partner with Boa in 2001. DC — along with a number of other big brands, such as Burton — followed soon after. A partnership with Pearl Izumi launched Boa into the cycling world with the Viper Boa shoes in 2003.

A chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, and Boa on every shoe

Boa certainly has no issues with name recognition these days, what with an estimated 16 million reels currently populating the globe since the company first began production, over 250 brand partners, and more than 200 employees spread across six offices worldwide. In fact, it’s more common for cycling shoe brands to offer Boa-equipped models than not, and many companies equip their flagship models with Boa exclusively.

Boa has also expanded well beyond snowsports and cycling, with a prominent position in golf, a wide range of shoe and non-shoe applications in the outdoor industry, and even products in the medical and construction/utility industries.

“Once consumers got a hold of them, the response has almost always been really good,” Hammerslag said. “That’s what has kept us in business, as well as fueled our growth. Once consumers like it, then it becomes easy, because retailers see it selling out the door, the sales are seen by the brands, and it continues to grow.

“Over the last four or five years, we’ve had a lot of growth in cycling as more and more people have used [Boa], and as it’s been embraced more and more by pro cyclists.”

Giro and Silca join the Boa family

Boa’s list of cycling brand partners has now grown by two, with the recent addition of both Giro and Silca.

Giro will feature Boa on two new road shoes — the Factor Techlace and Sentrie Techlace (along with the Factress Techlace and Raes Techlace women’s analogues). According to Giro, the aim of all of the new Techlace models was to replicate the fit and feel of the company’s ultra-popular Empire lace-up models — a category the company pioneered in 2013 — but with easier on-the-fly adjustability, and much faster ingress and egress.

All use a similar layout, with Boa dials serving as the main closure around the front of the ankle for a firm hold, micro-adjustability (just 1mm of cable length change per click of the dial), and a single-motion release function.

Giro’s decision to incorporate Boa into its shoes for the first time stemmed from its experience with helmet retention systems. Whereas earlier retention systems required users to push the two halves together to tighten the helmet on to their heads (and then push two buttons to loosen), more recent models switched to a dial layout that was much easier to use.

“People understand and want dials for adjustability,” said Giro senior product marketing manager Simon Fisher, “so that’s why we turned to Boa.”

Meanwhile, the mid- and forefoot areas of Giro’s new shoes are secured with a novel strap/lace hybrid design called Techlace. Here, laces are fed through multiple eyelets just like on the Empire, but the lace segments are shorter — and instead of tying the ends together, the laces are anchored into short straps that are then secured with hook-and-loop patches to the upper.

In concept, Techlace bears some similarities to Mavic’s ErgoStrap design, but while the latter is essentially a more flexible interpretation of conventional hook-and-loop straps, the former more closely mimics traditional laces in how it secures around the foot.

Giro’s new Techlace concept may come across a bit hokey at first — and to be honest, that was my first thought as well before actually trying it — but two test rides during Giro’s launch event in the Swiss Alps (comprising 177km and roughly 3,000m of climbing in total) provided plenty of support for Giro’s claims.

Overall fit and feel were indeed very similar to the Empire SLX, but with none of the hassles of a traditional lace-up upper — in other words, essentially a quick-release Empire with just a bit more weight (420g vs. 350g per pair, claimed, size 42.5), far more convenience, and arguably even more tunability since the three zones are now truly independently adjustable.

Initial impressions are very good, but stay tuned for a more in-depth review to come. Worldwide availability is slated for October.

Silca’s tool roll, on the other hand, is certainly a more surprising application for Boa.

This new tool roll features an overall design that’s very similar to the company’s current model, including the trick “Y-Axis” strap that uniquely holds everything more tightly together, and sets Silca’s example apart from other tool rolls. It’s also slightly larger, and now fits inner tubes up to 700x45c in size. But whereas the current model uses a simple woven nylon strap and a ladder lock to secure it to the saddle rails, the new one uses a Boa cable system — the first time Boa has been used in such a way, at least to my knowledge.

“Boa allows a greater total range of fitment, better adjustability, and a more powerful attachment to ensure the bag remains tight to the seat rolls,” said Silca owner Josh Poertner, “and all with no loose strap to manage.”

Other features include a waxed canvas body (just as Silca uses on its other tool roll), computer quilted 3M reflective thread, and a red ripstop nylon liner for better visibility and wear resistance. Pricing and availability for the new tool roll is still to be confirmed.

“This one is really exciting for us,” said Poertner. “This is the first product in a line of bags and soft accessories.”

The 2016 Rio Olympics may be done and dusted, but for some athletes, the excitement is only just about the start. International competition continues September 7th when the world’s best para-athletes take to the Rio venues for their chance at golden glory. Here is one paracyclist’s road to Rio.

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I always wanted to be an Olympian. From a young age I would daydream about becoming the next Flo Jo or Bonnie Blair. Seriously, I didn’t care what sport. But I never imagined that one day I would be a Paralympian.

I grew up with a tennis racquet in my hand and would put it down only to play other sports like softball and basketball throughout high school. I didn’t discover cycling until after my accident. Shoot, cycling wasn’t even on my radar.

You see, I went to college to play tennis. Sure I went to study, too, because I wanted to be the next great wildlife biologist. But playing tennis in college was a dream come true… a dream that got cut short.

In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years my best friend and I were involved in a roll-over car accident. Our car rolled 8.5 times. I was the only survivor.

Mercifully, I don’t remember the accident at all due to a severe traumatic brain injury that left me in a coma and clinging on to life. I am left with many scars, but clothes hide most of them, except for one: my prosthetic leg.

Doctors weren’t sure what kind of person I would be when I woke up. Even after I woke up, doctors and professionals have tried to keep my expectations low. I will never forget when one medical professional sat me down and said “Sweetheart, you’ll never be as good as you were.”

I am proud to say that I am better than I ever I was.

Becoming a Paralympian

My story is probably not all that different from other athletes who acquire their impairments later in life. Since I was born able-bodied and participated in Olympic sports growing up, I never once considered the Paralympics. In fact, before my injury I would have had a hard time differentiating the Special Olympics from the Paralympics. Even in this modern age, I still meet people who assume the Paralympics and the Special Olympics are the same event.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, I’ll just quickly explain: The Paralympics showcase the athletic skills of individuals with physical impairments while the Special Olympics are for athletes with intellectual disabilities.

For many years, I didn’t think I even qualified for a Paralympic sport. I thought that since I wasn’t blind nor using a wheelchair, I would be too able. It’s also possible that I was too afraid to admit my own limitations, but that’s a story for my therapist.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I probably wasn’t alone in my simple assumptions of athletes with physical impairments. Like I thought that anyone who is blind has absolutely no vision or anyone who uses a wheelchair has absolutely no function in their lower extremities. Like I said, my assumptions were very simple and very far from the truth. And there are probably many people in this country and other countries that still think that way, too.

One of the tricky concepts in the Paralympics is the classification structure. You see, individuals are grouped into classifications based on their physical abilities, kind of like age-group categories in able-bodied sports. The goal is to make the playing field as fair as possible. If we think about cycling, it wouldn’t be fair to for a tandem bicycle team to race straight up against a single bike, right? Introducing and helping the general public become familiar with the concept of different physical impairment categories is kind of hard. But for those of us already involved in cycling it may not be that far of a stretch.

Oh, I could go on rambling about impairment categories and trying to explain each one, but this blog would get very long. Maybe that’s why people have trouble embracing paracycling, because it takes time and attention to understand. I am what they call a C4 or WC4 athlete, which is a category that includes athletes with cerebral palsy, amputations and other lower limb impairments.

My journey in cycling started in 2006, not long after I was told that I would never walk again.

Since walking became so hard, I was looking for an alternative tool to help me enjoy the outdoors under my own power. When I started biking, I did not immediately identify as a “paracyclist.” I wanted to just be a cyclist and I only wanted people to notice my missing leg after I passed them.

Like any cyclist, it took time to develop the strength and endurance to be successful in competition. In 2010 I joined the Paracycling Team, and over the years, I have won 10 World Championship titles, one Paralympic gold medal, and one Paralympic silver medal (both from the London 2012 Games). In September, I will be going to the Rio Paralympic Games with Team USA to defend my gold medal.

There are few words to describe what this all means to me. I keep searching for the right words and trying to remember to thank everyone who has helped me get this far. Through the skill of medical professionals and the support of countless people, I am getting to live my childhood dream of representing Team USA on the sport’s grandest stage. And you know what? I’m not disappointed that I’m not an Olympian. I’m more proud of being a Paralympian. That title is proof that I have had to overcome more than most to reach my dreams.

Where is the love?

Cycling has enriched my life beyond measure, as I’m sure you all have experienced in your own ways as well. As an elite para-athlete however I wish we could share our stories more often and inspire more people to challenge their own limitations. I truly believe we are all capable of more than we know.

Alas, a lot of the excitement, media attention, and support around the Olympics is not extended to the Paralympics.

In Europe, especially in Germany and Great Britain, Paralympians are attended to in much the same way as Olympians. Goodness, did you know that gold medal winners on Team GB are bestowed royal titles like “Sir”, “Dame” or “Knight” for winning a gold medal? While on the other end of the spectrum, there are countries that shame individuals with physical impairments and those athletes must overcome gigantic obstacles in order to represent their countries. But what about the US? Why hasn’t America’s relatively new obsession and passion for cycling extended to paracycling?

I don’t know.

I guess it all comes down to resources. It is well known that very few Olympians are able to support themselves on their athleticism alone. For Paralympians it’s practically unheard of, and the expenses are daunting.

No Olympian has ever had to buy a racing wheelchair, pay for a sighted guide to train and race with, or invest in new prosthetic legs or arms. The medical bills that Paralympians face are astonishing. Shoot, I just got a bill for $9,000 for a new leg just so I can walk around!

Sponsorship in cycling (especially women’s cycling) is hard to come by as it is, but it’s been encouraging to see more attention paid to these athletes by the media. Team Twenty16 and UnitedHealthcare, both UCI pro teams, have led the way by including elite paracyclists on their rosters.

We all know that coverage and publicity increases the potential for sponsorships. So my request of you is this: Tune in to the Paralympics this September. Clicks and views count, but more than anything, let us inspire you. I never dreamt of becoming a Paralympian, but I am extremely grateful that I have.

 

(I met Anne at Equinox a few months ago. I was immediately impressed by her focus and will. Since then, we have kayaked the Chicago River, swam Lake Michigan and trained Kettlebells. She is an amazing trainer and person.)

At one point, you face an obstacle.

Sometimes it feels like it’s keeping you back. Preventing you from moving forward.

From reaching your goals. From becoming your best self and giving it your all.

I know, because I’ve been there and in a big way, I’m there every day as a Deaf person. I don’t let that obstacle block my way.Now I embrace the obstacle, I push and I pull it, I lift it up, I flip it over.

The only way I can function and thrive in an environment that is a predominately hearing world that will not change for me, is to be focused and alert all the time.

What’s going on around me? What is that person saying? How do I make the situation easier for me and them?

It can be draining and lonely. It could suck more, but instead, I train my body to be my voice and mindset. Let the body do the talking for me.

When you do that extra rep you say “YES” I can persist. If I can’t handle taking my body out of its physical plateau, how do I get my mind out of its comfort zone?

It was scary when I became a personal trainer. It was a huge obstacle to be on a gym floor full of voices I couldn’t hear.

I had plopped myself in a mentally challenging opportunity but I wanted to set an example of expanding my comfort zone. I went in with intention going to help others use their fitness journey as a platform for mental strength and success in all kinds of endeavors.

How has this shaped me as a Deaf trainer?

I’ve had the honor of being asked by Dan to share a few lessons for trainers & coaches.

Train your focus muscle: Getting in the work for yourself, alone.

Some of the hardest obstacles we face in our careers, personal lives or even training, can be an opportunity but you – and only you – have the power to view it that way. No matter how many people encourage you, it still requires inner grit.

When you train, hard, your sweat is a fulfillment of your promise to be your best self, and you increase your autonomy and focus.

Don’t get me wrong – one of my favorite things about fitness is the community but we have to train our focus muscle. This is why I was able to do elite Spartans or go from #170 1 RM clean to 2 reps #170 power hang cleans in one year.

So, I recommend this:

Train alone most of the time (with the exception of a trainer, which is something I recommend for just about anyone.)

When you do partner workouts, make the work somewhat relevant to your goals so you get the benefit of community and stay on track.

Don’t use social media while you workout or train your clients. Post them before or after workouts.

Say no to distractions. It doesn’t make you an ass. If you feel like you’re ignoring somebody, you are…and that person is you.

Do this once a week if this is not your norm: Pick a workout that makes you squirm just a little. I like to pick a word that carries a lot of meaning to anchor me during the workout by spelling it out instead of counting the reps.

Clarity

Having no help on the fitness floor forced me to make communication as clear and simple as possible. As Dan says, “simple, but not easy.”

I am able to work intimately and I tend to be a better listener than most. If I look away for a mere second, I’ve lost track of the conversation completely. That’s if I’m even following in the first place with lip reading, texting, paper/pen.

Clients are more engaged knowing how locked into them I am in that moment, and they can’t lose eye contact with me either. This has allowed me to be clear in communicating movements through my simple words and visuals.

For example, I was teaching a client the deadlift basics using a ViPR. I made the sign for “bow & arrow” the same time she performed the hinge, and asked her to follow my pace as I was signing. I used my hands to paint a “wall” in front of her hips to demonstrate where to complete the movement.

Without having to trying to pronounce “hip thrust or glute thrust, avoiding overextension of the spine, your posterior chain is weaker and other muscles compensate so we need to learn this….”

I then put down the ViPR without instruction and asked her to pick it up. The second time, I told her to do it again using what she just learned.

She understood immediately how the deadlift was going to benefit her.

Empathy

 Having challenges be the norm allow me to relate to my clients, who are there for a reason. Something needs to change for them, and it starts with their body.

Hence this is why you need to train yourself alone to understand your client during their programming, and when to slowly bring the challenges to strengthen their mental game.

A program that that is more “maintenance” than progressive means the mind is not going to change much, either will their ability to live and lead the life they want.

For example, I recently designed an obstacle course for a client that had been training for a few months using a BOSU, ropes and gliders. If I had given her that kind of workout in the beginning of the program, she would have doubted herself.

But slowly everybody’s comfort zone expands, but it’s your responsibility to do it for yourself and help your clients do the same.

We have valuable tools to help us as professionals from books to conferences to blogs in abundance.

But the best tool of all is internalized. In you.

If you train yourself to visit what lies out of your comfort zone, you will lift and lead yourself and your clients to a life where doubt and obstacles are unmasked to reveal opportunity.

 

 

“I want a third gold medal,” American Kristin Armstrong had told media on the eve of the 2016 Olympic time trial, and it was that will combined with the experience of a 13-year professional career that earned her a third straight Olympic gold medal in the race against the clock on Wednesday, a day before Armstrong’s 43rd birthday.

At 5.5 seconds slower than Armstrong, Russia’s Olga Zabelinskaya (BePink) received silver, and at 11 seconds behind, Olympic road race winner Anna van der Breggen (Rabo-Liv, The Netherlands) won bronze.

The last to start the time trial, all eyes were on Armstrong. Rain and wind made an already technical course more treacherous as riders had to navigate steep descents and sharp turns in the wet. Riders were caution and it became clear early on that experience would pay off in today’s race.

With three Olympics already under her belt and two gold medals to her name, none of the riders came into the race with as much experience as Armstrong. That didn’t make it any easier for the American, however, who gave it her all and came across the finish with a nose bleed and fell to the ground in exhaustion.

But she was soon joined by her son, and a huge sense of relief and accomplishment beamed from her face as she held up three fingers to the camera.

“I don’t have words to describe it. When you’ve already been two times at the pinnacle of the sport, why risk coming back for the gold medal? The best answer I can give is that I can. Today the stars aligned,” Armstrong said after finishing.

The extra effort it took to win, she said, was inspired by Mara Abbott who gave an heroic effort during Sunday’s road race and came breathtakingly close to a medal.

“At about 5K to go, [my coach] said it’s up to you what color medal you want. I thought of my race on Sunday and I thought that I had to give it everything for my team and give it everything for Mara,” Armstrong told USA Cycling after the race.

“For the past 24 hours, Mara has been leaving me notes. I found one in my coffee cup yesterday telling me I’m a champion. I found another one on my brush. There was another one on my pillow and another one on my podium bag. The support she’s turned around since her race on Sunday has been phenomenal and that is what a team is all about. I feel that we’re all genuinely happy for one another and it’s given me great pleasure to represent the team. I haven’t experienced this in all of my years.”

Armstrong is the first cyclist to win three gold medals in the same discipline.

2016 Olympics individual time trial
1. Kristin Armstrong (Twenty16-RiderBiker, USA)
2. Olga Zabelinskaya (BePink, Russia)
3. Anna van der Breggen (Rabo-Liv, The Netherlands)
4. Ellen van Dijk (Boels-Dolmans, The Netherlands)
5. Elisa Longo Borghini (Wiggle-High5, Italy)

Full results at the bottom of this post.

How it happened

After a dramatic road race last Sunday, which saw Annemiek van Vleuten (Orica-AIS, The Netherlands) crash badly out of a winning position and her compatriot Anna van der Breggen take the Olympic title, we were looking forward to a hotly contested but perhaps less eventful time trial.

Wetness called for caution

The weather at the start didn’t bode well, however, as pouring rain and windy conditions made for a nervous start. And, with Van Vleuten’s crash still fresh in people’s minds, the Grumari circuit’s steep and technical descents were taken with caution.

Luckily, the cobbled section featured in the road race that had caused some problems was left out of the circuit, as riders were allowed to use the strip of asphalt alongside the cobbles.

“I looked out the window and thought ‘oh my gosh.’ We don’t train really hard to wake up to pouring rain on the time trial bike, let alone on a technical course like this,” said Armstrong. “I had a choice at that moment to either take it and get super nervous or I could take it and say you know what, I’ve probably ridden my bike in the rain on the time trial bike more than any one out here. So I kind of tricked my mind and gave myself confidence because everyone else had to go with this.”

The weather was definitely a factor for road race gold medalist Anna van der Breggen.

“The strong winds scared me and the descents were also difficult in this weather,” she said in a team statement, who given those factors and her tired legs from Sunday’s effort, was very happy with her second Olympic medal.

Ellen van Dijk’s costly mishap

Despite the conditions, riders managed to maneuvre their stiff time trial bikes safely along the course but Ellen van Dijk (Boels-Dolmans, The Netherlands) did slip into the gutter in a moment of carelessness and lost precious seconds trying to get going again.

This would turn out to be a crucial moment in the race, as she was in a medal contending position when the mishap occurred and despite her best efforts, would have to settle for a fourth place finish, 22 seconds behind the winner.

“I have worked so long and so hard for this. But I never really believed I could win a medal here…until last week. Suddenly I thought, yes it is possible. I started dreaming of a medal this week, I hadn’t dared to dream of it before,” Van Dijk told the Dutch media in tears. “I can blame no one but myself and it’ll keep me up at night for a while.”

A strong start by Canadian Tara Whitten

Canadian Tara Whitten set the fastest time early on and she sat in the hotseat for quite some. Even when all riders had passed the first time check, only three women were quicker: Van der Breggen, Elisa Longo Borghini (Wiggle-High5, Italy) and Armstrong.

Armstrong, Longo Borghini and Van der Breggen remained in contention with one another positions at time split 2, but there was one other rider who set an even faster time. Olga Zabelinskaya, the Russian rider who originally wasn’t allowed to compete in Rio after testing positive for octopamine in 2014, came flying through the checkpoints.

Along with other Russian athletes, Zabelinskaya, two-time bronze medalist in 2012, had only been given the go ahead to compete at Rio last Friday and clearly was out here with something to prove.

Whitten remained in the hotseat until Longo Borghini came in 10 seconds ahead if her with Van Dijk on her heals.

The finale

Van Dijk came in three seconds ahead of Longo Borghini, setting the fastest time at that point but she knew it wouldn’t be long as the fastest three had yet to finish.

Indeed, Zabelinskaya came in 16 seconds faster. And when Van der Breggen couldn’t get to Zabelinskaya’s time and world time trial champion Linda Villumsen (UnitedHealthcare, New Zealand) only set the 5th best time when she finished, it became apparent that only Armstrong could challenge Zabelinskaya’s time.

After the USA came tantalisingly close to a medal in Sunday’s road race, all hope was on the 42-year-old Idahoan. Her Olympic selection had been at the centre of much controversy and media frenzy these past two months, and everyone was wondering if she could do it. Could she come back from her second retirement and win her third straight gold?

And yes she could! Riding herself into the history books, Armstrong gave herself the best birthday present: another golden Olympic medal.

Full results of the women’s Olympic time trial coming soon

“When I come out I have supreme confidence. I’m scared to death. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of losing. I’m afraid of being humiliated. But I’m confident. The closer I get to the ring the more confident I get. The closer, the more confident.” — Mike Tyson

Walking up to the bar, I knew 750 was going up. 30 pounds over my current PR, 50 over my meet PR, but no doubt in my mind I had it.

I knew long before I even stepped to the bar that it was going up that day.

Approaching the bar confidently, versus timidly can be the difference in PRing, or missing a lift.

Developing confidence doesn’t happen automatically, or accidently. It’s developed through habits you’ve formed in your training and daily life.

Overcome fear and doubt, and approach the bar knowing you’re going to smash the weight.

No more over-thinking or second guessing.

Here are six strategies I use to gain confidence and prepare for a lift.

Missing Weights

Build confidence long before you hit the platform by hitting all your weights in training. When you hit your attempts in training (or a meet), you continue to gain confidence.

Missing attempts does the opposite. When you start missing, you start second guessing yourself.

I always start my programs with a conservative training max. Same goes for a meet opener. They’re both something I’m 100% sure I know I can hit, even on my worst day.

Tons of lifters start with training maxes “they know they can hit”, grinder PR’s, what they hit on a variation of the lift, or what their goal weight is. Choosing an optimistic or unrealistic 1RM is setting yourself up for failure down the road.

Start conservatively, you can always increase it later if need be.

If you use a percentage based program, 95% of your best, clean, recent 1RM is a reasonable training max for most.

At a meet, don’t set yourself up for failure by opening too heavy. Open on the lighter side and build momentum.

For your first meet, Chad Wesley Smith recommends taking these percentages of your best clean gym lifts during this training cycle:

Opener: 90-92%

2nd: 95-97%

3rd: 99-102%

During my training for a meet, I won’t actually hit the numbers I intend to on the platform. It takes a lot of trust if you’re not used to this, but you do not need to hit your 3^rd or even 2^nd attempts in the gym to hit them on the platform.

When you test your maxes a couple weeks out from the meet, where do you expect to go? How much can you expect to put on your lifts in just a couple weeks?

Build your strength in the gym and test your big lifts for the platform.

Mentality

A video posted by Adam Pine (@adam_pine) on Jun 3, 2016 at 6:02pm PDT

 

Powerlifting is mental as much physical — the intent in which you moves matters.

It’s a mindset.

Whether it’s 135 or a PR — it’s a matter of how fast it’s going up, not IF it’s going up.

Never approach the bar with caution — be aggressive and attack violently.

Do what you can do with good form.

This was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

Not paying enough attention to my form in the beginning held me back a ton later. Over time I developed nagging injuries I had to let heal, and bad habits I had to unlearn.

Develop proper technique before loading up a movement. Lifting with proper form will reduce your risk of injury and allow you to lift more weight.

Mastering it takes time.

The goal is to find your own optimal technique and make it automatic, something you don’t have to really think about. This comes with experience – doing the same movement over and over again.

In the beginning, you cue yourself to perform the action. Over time you minimize the cueing. Eventually it becomes mostly automatic – by feel.

When it becomes second nature you don’t have your mind cluttered with too many cues, thoughts, doubts or anything else.

You can really commit to the lift.

Stay Healthy

The fastest way to stop making progress, or to shatter your confidence is an injury.

Injuries not only slow you down, but they can fester in your mind long after they’ve healed and shake your confidence.

Be proactive rather than reactive.

Mobility, strength and conditioning work are all important in the pursuit of strength.

A little mobility and conditioning work can go a long way and will help you stay in the game for longer.

Stay in shape — don’t neglect this stuff because it’s boring, or it doesn’t directly increase your squat, bench or deadlift. Nobody wants to be out of breath all the time and walking around like the Tin Man.

Do your mobility and conditioning work, manage your volume and intensity properly, and use proper technique.

Sometimes accidents do happen and if you do sustain an injury, take the proper amount of time to fully recover.

Listen to your body and let pain be your guide.

If your body is screaming at you not to do something, listen to it. It’s not easy to do, but it pays off in the long run. Devote a little time to doing some mobility, recovery and conditioning work. Being mobile and athletic will only be helpful for long term success.

Excuses

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” – Henry Ford

Too often people give up on something before they even get started. Don’t be a good excuse maker.

“My arms are too long, I’ll never be a good bencher.”

“My arms are too short, I’ll never be a good deadlifter.”

“My femurs are too long, I’ll never be a good squatter.”

Complaining about poor leverages, imperfect training conditions, or anything else puts you in a losing mindset. Don’t give yourself an out — a reason to fail.

Don’t dismiss your failures with lame excuses. Instead, be critical and look for solutions. Find a way to get stronger.

How can I improve my: technique, programming, size, mobility, recovery, diet, etc? I constantly look to make improvements in these areas.

Identify and focus on what you can improve, rather than dwelling on the things that you cannot change.

You can, and you will get better if you work harder and prioritize strengthening your weakness, rather than making an excuses. You can be confident knowing you trained your ass off trying to bring up your weak points, instead of buying into the bullshit.

Passion, Dedication & Experience

Ultimately you have to go in week in and week out and just get it done. There’s no tricks to it, nothing fancy, just hard work and consistency.

When you’ve got the “iron bug” you look for reasons to train rather than excuses not to. You don’t whine and complain about having to train — you look forward to it.

Lifting isn’t punishment for drinking, smoking, a bad diet, or whatever else. It’s something you do because you love it.

When you want something and you find what you’re passionate about in life, you find time for it.

The more hours you spend training, the more experience and time under the bar you have, the more comfortable you’ll be. There’s no substitute for experience, and experience builds confidence more than anything else.

Walking up to the bar, and actually believing in yourself is powerful feeling and difference maker.

Don’t miss weights in training. Missing weights can shake your confidence. Hitting your attempts will continue to boost it.

Take measures to prevent injuries. The fastest way to stop making progress is to get hurt. An injury may heal fast physically, but can leave a nasty mental scar. If you do sustain an injury – stay patient through your recovery.

Commit to the lift. Be aggressive and attack violently!

Don’t make excuses. It’s easy to buy in to the nonsense and give yourself a lame excuse as to why you’re not successful.

Train hard, train smart and train consistently. When you find your passion, you’ll find purpose and a way to be successful.

The post 6 Tips for Approaching the Bar with Confidence appeared first on Juggernaut.

The team zone before a race is a hectic place to be. The designated parking lot is filled with team RVs, cars, and hundreds of people milling about. The riders are going through their pre-race routine, team staff are shuttling bikes and gear around, camera crews and reporters are trying to get some quick interviews, and fans crowd around the race favourite’s RV hoping for a mere glace of their idol. In the midst of this organised chaos, one mechanic stands out as she goes through her usual pre-race duties. In her black, team-issued polo she’s easily lost in the parking lot crowd, but what makes her stand out is that she is…well, a woman. Yes, even at a professional women’s race a female head mechanic is a rare sight. So unique in fact, that she is the sole female mechanic on the pro road tour.

Her name is Andrea Smith and she is the team mechanic for the Colavita Pro Cycling Team, a team that boasts an all-female staff.

Choosing to support women

A photo posted by Colavita-Bianchi Pro Cycling (@teamcolavita) on Jul 28, 2016 at 8:55pm PDT

One of the top-ranked teams in the US, Team Colavita has quietly been providing big career-building opportunities for women in cycling for years. Colavita, an Italian pasta and olive company, has been supporting women’s cycling longer than any other organization in the pro peloton. It has provided a stepping stone for many Olympians and national champions over the years, including well-known names such as Georgia Bronzini, Alison Powers, Tina Pic, Rachel Heal and Kathryn Bertine.

A long-time sponsor, team owner and Colavita USA founder John Profaci was faced with the difficult decision to cut either the men’s or women’s program during the 2008 recession, it was the women’s team he decided to keep.

“Back in 2008 when the market crashed and I had to make some decisions for my company on where to make cuts in marketing, I dropped the men’s program and kept the women. People criticized me for that, thinking that I was giving up the bigger side of publicity in the sport, but I felt strongly about keeping the women. I thought that little by little, they were giving [my company] as much publicity for the right people. My brand is a grocery item and the women control 90 percent of the decision making for grocery making [in the US],” Profaci explained.

Business aside, Profaci gets personal satisfaction from supporting a women’s team.

“Having had men’s and women’s teams side-by-side since 2003, I am not embarrassed to say that women’s teams are so much more interesting. Because the money in the women’s sport is so much lower, the women are also professionals outside of the sport. Kimberly Wells, for example, is a doctor. Gretchen Stumhofer is getting her PhD. The stories in women’s cycling are fascinating. I love the idea that I can support these women and the passion that they have.”

An all-women staff

We are staffed by the best in the business!!!! Head Mechanic @andejsmith tunes our @bianchi_usa bikes with #parktool !!!!#promechaniclife #womenscycling #colavitateamcamp2016 #holdtherope

A photo posted by Colavita-Bianchi Pro Cycling (@teamcolavita) on Feb 25, 2016 at 5:23pm PST

In 2014, Profaci decided to take his support of women in the sport a step further and actively sought out an all-women staff to run his women’s team.

“I had worked with a female mechanic on the men’s side before and I just loved the idea of having all-women staff for our women’s program,” said Profaci.

Rider-turned-manager Mary Zider became the team’s Director Sportif, and massage therapist Amanda Rose Shission joined the staff as soigneur and, ahead of the 2015 season, Andrea Smith joined as the pro road tour’s only female head mechanic.

“It’s not like I added just any women. Mary, Andrea, Amanda –these are three very capable and professional women. But yes, it was a conscious effort to set up an all-female staff. I wanted to give women the opportunity because they aren’t provided with these opportunities a lot of the times.”

Meet Andrea Smith, the only female mechanic on the pro road tour

Finding a female mechanic for a traveling cycling team was easier said than done.

“When [Profaci] initially suggested having an all-female staff in 2014, I just loved the idea, but I was also immediately concerned that I may not be able to find a female mechanic,” said director sportif Mary Zider, adding that there are no other teams she knows of that have a female mechanic.

But she found one in fellow former racer and shop mechanic Andrea Smith following a chance encounter at Ride Studio Café in Lexington, MA.

“I dabbled in road racing and raced cyclocross for five years and I had raced a little bit against Mary. She came into the shop where I was working, reached out later and here I am,” said Andrea Smith.

Smith has been a mechanic since 2004, a career that was sparked simply by working on her own bike.

“I was a runner in high school and college, and got into mountain biking as a form of cross training,” said Smith. “I had purchased a new mountain bike, which I at the time thought was super expensive. And so, since I spent all that money, I wanted to learn how to take care of it. That’s what started my interest in bike mechanics –working on my own bike.”

Choosing wrenching over her degree in athletic training, Smith took a job at the outdoor retail store REI.

“At that point I thought I knew a lot about working on bikes but really, all my training came at REI,” said Smith who would stay with REI for six years before moving on to other bike shops.

All the while, she was always the only female mechanic.

“At REI, there were women doing the purchasing or retail but there weren’t women wrenching on bikes like I was,” Smith said. “But my coworkers and management staff have always been extremely supportive. They always believed in my ability and my gender played no part. It was more the perspective of the customers.”

“Customers would call or ask to speak to a mechanic or the manager of the shop and then I’d come out and they be surprised; “Oh I wasn’t expecting a woman.” You have to break that barrier with them, one on one. We never ran into any bad situations or anything. I only ever had one customer who didn’t want me working on their bike. One in six years, out of thousands of interactions, isn’t bad.”

When she joined Colavita as the team mechanic ahead of the 2015 season, she exchanged shop life for life on the road and customers with professional athletes.

“I was very well received by the team and by other team mechanics. Everyone is super friendly, because we see all the same people weekend after weekend, and we are all in this together, but I was nervous starting with the team,” Smith admitted. “Being female, I did feel like I had to prove myself 10 times over. I didn’t want there to be any question or any mechanical.”

“To be clear, they did not make me feel that way but I, I wanted everything to be perfect. I didn’t want anyone thinking ‘Can she handle this?’,” Smith continued. “I got their trust and support right away. No one was double checking my work or looking over my shoulder or anything. It’s been an amazing two years and a great ride.”

And Zider had nothing but praise for Smith.

“I’ve been very fortunate to experience a number of professional teams during my professional racing career, and I can easily say that Andrea has by far been among the most meticulous, hard working and approachable mechanics that I have ever worked with,” said Zider. “When you’re confident in your equipment and you feel comfortable on your bike, it’s two less important things that a rider has to worry about. And it provides more energy for riders to be able to focus on what they are ultimately there to accomplish. Having raced herself, Andrea is sensitive and aware of the many small details that can make a huge difference for the riders. She is a role model to many females who are working jobs that are typically male-dominated.”

Getting more women wrenching

Smith said she’d love to see more female mechanics, but said the barriers to entry are significant. To get more women wrenching, we need them riding.

“I think a lot of women are intimidated going into a bike shop, let alone work at one,” Smith said. “I think there is a direct correlation between women riding bikes and women working on bikes. A lot of guys start in bike shops as an after-school job in high school because they’re riding bikes. Girls tend to stop riding bikes by the time they are of high school age. I think we need to get girls interested in bikes earlier and keep them interested in bikes.”

For those interested in bike mechanics, Smith said there are several resources specifically to get more women into bike mechanics including free maintenance clinics, UBI, USA Cycling Clinics, etc.

So does having an all-female staff make a difference?

“In terms of competence, no,” said Smith. “Men and women are equally competent, but in terms of team culture and dynamics, I think having an all-female staff makes us very unique. The riders feel proud to be part of the team.”

“Let me first say that I don’t see any deficiencies in having a mixed, female-male staff, but in my professional cycling experience to date, having an all-female staff and team has only strengthened the Colavita team,” said Zider.

“We are fortunate to have a highly focused team of very professional lady cyclists, unselfish individuals who understand that to consistently excel, we will always be strongest when we work together as a team. We strive very hard to create and maintain a solid foundation built on fostering a positive and supportive environment with a ‘family-oriented’ culture. In our case, having an all-female staff and team has proven to be very beneficial and important to noticeably strengthening our team culture.”

 

Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter-Phinney — the parents of current cycling phenom Taylor Phinney — were the runaway favorites to win the men’s and women’s Olympic road races in 1984. It was a dream scenario with all the ingredients for a fairy tale ending: a popular American husband-and-wife duo, a first-ever road race for women at the Olympics, and home field advantage with the course set in Mission Viejo, California. Real life isn’t a fairy tale, though, and that dream scenario didn’t end as planned. US tech editor James Huang sat down with Phinney at his home in Boulder, Colorado, to not only take a look at the bike he rode that infamous day, but also recap that fateful day in July.

Electricity in the air

July 28, 1984, was certainly not like any other day for the Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter-Phinney. Although both were already superstars of their sport and well accustomed to being in the limelight, the Olympics were upon them — and not just any Olympic Games, but ones hosted on American soil for the first time in fifty years. Both were highly favored to win their respective events in what was hoped to be a storybook husband-and-wife ending, and to say that both felt the pressure of the day would be quite the understatement.

“Connie and I were staying in private housing, as were the whole road team, because the day the Games opened, the first competition was the women’s road race,” said Phinney. “We skipped the opening ceremony so we didn’t have lead legs from standing up for five hours. Connie’s race was at 9am so she went off early and I stayed in bed, and then got up and turned on the TV. And they were already talking us up, this American married couple, who were both favored to win, and what a historic double that would be. Not that I didn’t sense or accept pressure before, but that was just like, boom!

“What had been remarkable about the whole experience up until that time was how incredibly amazing the crowds had been. One day we were out there training, a week before the games, riding on Highway 1 toward Laguna Beach. All of a sudden, there are all these people on the side of the road, the traffic ceases, and there are more and more people. We were in our USA kit and people were cheering. Finally, we stopped and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ We had inadvertently run into the final leg of the torch relay. To hear all these thousands of people, three or four deep, on Highway 1 — that gave us a taste for the enthusiasm of the Games.

“On the Olympic road race day, we drove on to the course to get to the cabins and get ready, and we just turned up the hill during the women’s race on La Paz Rd. in Mission Viejo. I’ll never forget it. You turn on with this ratty old van that said ‘USA’ on it, and there were twenty and thirty-deep people, spectators all the way around the course. The noise was deafening, and it only got louder. I still get chills thinking about it. That was our introduction to race day. We were going to race in front of what was estimated to be 200,000 people. It really was amazing.”

Race day

“We got to the cabins, and got settled, and we were waiting for the women to finish,” Phinney recalled. “There was a very small TV in the back of the van that was just loosely built-in — a little, tiny, old-school black-and-white TV that we plugged into the cigarette lighter and adjusted the antenna to get the reception for ABC. In the last kilometer, Connie was back towards the back of the group of what had been six women, but Jeannie Longo, who was her main competition at that point, something happened to her derailleur and she dropped off the back. So Connie was wondering what happened to Jeannie, and why she was positioned poorly in the back, and I was yelling at the TV, ‘move up, move up! You’re too far back!'”

“Rebecca Twigg jumped with about 200 meters to go, and then Connie comes roaring up the side, and is carrying way more speed. But Rebecca has a couple lengths lead. Right at the line, they both throw their bikes, but Connie just does a masterful bike throw, and I can’t tell if she’s won or not. But we run out into the street because the cabins were located right after the finish line. Connie comes rolling past and she’s surrounded by fifty people, and the hillside on the other side of the cabin was just filled with people and noise. She just mouths, ‘I think I won’.”

Phinney would have loved to relish in that moment but he didn’t have that luxury with his own race start only a few hours later.

“I was so ecstatic for her, but I had to almost immediately put my game face back on and get out for the men’s race.”

The brutality of the men’s road race course was looming as well. Not only was it long at 190.20km, but it was also hilly with roughly 380m of climbing for each of the race’s twelve laps, By the end of the day, racers would have logged more than 4,500m of ascent in total — those that completed the full course, that is.

Of the 135 starters, only 55 finished.

“The men’s race started, and it was a hot day. It was 120 miles, 90 degrees, 80 or 90 percent humidity, which didn’t favor me, historically. I wasn’t a good heat rider, but I’d spent the winter preparing for heat in an old-school wrestling tactic. I would go riding, no matter what the weather here in Colorado, and I would put on layers of wool jerseys. And in between the layers, I’d put a plastic garbage bag so that I was always sweating. That was my heat training! And of course, I was not doing what physiologists would recommend now. I was not drinking enough because, again, the thought was that you’ve got to get used to being dehydrated. That was never so true as in the Olympics because it was so difficult to get a bottle and to get fed, because you had no support from your team car and there was only one place to go to get a bottle or musette. And that was on a very short stretch right past the finish line, where you’re going 30mph.”

That the conditions weren’t entirely favorable was the furthest thing from Phinney’s mind at that point. He wasn’t just capable of winning that day. He was supposed to win. He was destined to win.

The best laid plans

“I was on the best day of my life up to that point. I had calculated my peak perfectly, and I had envisioned nothing but winning the Olympic road race, at least two years going up. I’d spent every day visualizing how the race would unfold, picturing myself in the situation to win so it’d all come together really well.”

The US team went into the race with a clearly defined plan. Phinney was the designated leader, and he had three teammates at his side: Thurlow Rogers, Ron Kiefel, and Alexi Grewal. They were thoroughly drilled, it was a course they knew well, and with the Soviet Union one of 14 nations boycotting that year’s Games, the cards were stacked in the Americans’ favor.

There was only one problem with the plan: Grewal wasn’t on board with it.

“Alexi Grewal attacked very early, after two or three laps, and he established a breakaway with a lot of principal players: Dag-Otto Lauritzen and Morton Sæther, Steve Bauer, Thurlow Rogers, myself, and a couple of other guys. We just sailed away. Everybody was pulling, and we established a big lead. The problem was, I felt so good, and I wasn’t used to being in this situation where, other than the Coors Classic, there was live TV coverage. Turns out they spent most of the race covering another sport but we assumed it was live! And so you’re going up these roads, which were just crammed with people. The noise the crowd was making was so intense, you couldn’t even hear yourself think hardly, let alone talk. Even though Alexi would be right next to me, I’d say something to him, and I couldn’t even hear myself talk because it was such a thundering noise. So for five hours, we went like that.

“I felt so good that I overcooked myself a little bit. I pulled too hard, and was so confident that if I could take this group to the line, I’d win in a sprint. And then Alexi attacked again [with about 18km to go], and Thurlow and I looked at each other, like, ‘what the fuck?!’ He wasn’t supposed to do that, as per our team plan. But Alexi had been an outlier with Eddie B [Borysewicz, the US team coach], and had not come to any of the team meetings. And Eddie had just had a word with him before the race and said, ‘We are working for Davis, so whatever you can do to help him, you need to do it.’ Alexi was thinking, in the meantime, that whatever I need to do to beat Davis, I’m going to do. Which, in a way, I can’t fault him because it’s not like you get a gold medal for the team road race if one of you wins. Alexi had had his own struggles, and I respect him — now — greatly for how well he rode and how clinically he dismantled me and the other riders in that race.”

A naturally gifted climber, Grewal knew that Phinney likely wouldn’t be able to maintain the blistering pace he was setting on the La Paz Rd. — and as Phinney would come to understand years later, Grewal knew that there was little glory with merely being the teammate of an Olympic gold medalist.

“I was definitely pissed,” Phinney recounted. “Alexi gained about a minute going through the finish line with one lap to go. I was desperately thirsty at that point, desperately bonked, just because I hadn’t fueled properly and I hadn’t anticipated not being able to get any feeds. I had only had one thing on my mind at that point, which was to get a musette, or get a can of Coke, for this last lap. So I’m there trying to signal to our soigneur to get me a Coke, and then Steve Bauer attacks up the side! So I take the musette, and I look up and see Bauer 50 meters off the front, just launching, and I was like ‘Fuck!’. So I just slammed the musette down and chased Bauer.”

Phinney’s heat-of-the-moment decision to toss that musette — and the precious calories contained within — would ultimately prove costly.
“The situation, with about 8 miles to go, as we turned left on to the steepest climb on the course, is Alexi about to get caught by Steve, with me dangling off the back, chasing and just totally blowing up. And so we hit the bottom of the hill and it was just lights out for me.

“Lauritzen and Sæther roll by, and then I get picked up by Thurlow and what remains of the break, and I just get out in front and pulled the whole way to the finish line but I don’t have enough gas to even catch Dag Otto and Morton. Steve catches Alexi, and Alexi plays his cards perfectly. I don’t think Steve, and certainly I didn’t, expect Alexi to beat him in a head-to-head sprint after a hard road race but Alexi was incredibly smart that day. He had anticipated everything, even down to forcing Steve to the front with 500 meters to go, and making Steve lead it out, and waiting, and waiting. And just like Connie, he comes by at the end, only he comes by with enough speed to win by a length or two.”

Heartbreak and healing — and another shot at Olympic family glory

It’s one thing to lose a bike race when you know you’re capable of winning it. It’s another entirely when you’re supposed to win it, and with so much build-up leading up to the Olympics, Phinney’s disappointment was understandably stinging.

“At the end of the day for America, it was a banner day: two gold medalists. But I was inconsolable. I was happy for Connie on the one hand, but I had the ego of someone who wanted to win and somewhat expected to win, and was so bitterly disappointed that I’d made mistakes. I felt like I’d basically cost myself the win, which didn’t give Alexi, nor Steve, nor Dag Otto, who were one, two, and three, the credit they deserved. But again, when you’re in that world, it’s easy to become so self-absorbed.”

Phinney has now had more than three decades to move past that fateful afternoon. Today, he has not only healed those painful wounds but even manages to look back on that moment with a positive spin. Everything that happens in one’s life leads you to where you are now, after all, and for Phinney clan, there’s a whole new round of Olympic hope. After a devastating crash in 2014 that nearly ended his career, Taylor Phinney is now set to compete in both the road race and time trial in Rio, along with teammate Brent Bookwalter. Neither is a favorite to medal in the former event, but Phinney is certainly a medal contender in the race against the clock.

Davis Phinney is still the winningest road cyclist in American, and he certainly enjoyed crossing the line first, describing it to me as, “plugging into Earth’s core and feeling hot magma shooting out through your hands.” Even so, he says it’s still important to maintain perspective of what competitive cycling is all about.

“That was my Olympic story,” he said, ” and stories make life rich. One thing that Taylor and I talk about, is that what drives you ultimately to race bikes well is your passion for the sport, and if it’s all just training and numbers and race directors and team directors in your ear telling you what to do here and there, it becomes almost robotic. So you can’t lose sight of the passion. I think keeping these stories fresh and relevant is part of that.

“He’s a really good guy — a smart guy, a sensitive guy. It’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here. We shall see.”

My shoes are covered in mud that is roughly the consistency of crunchy peanut butter. The mud is slowly starting to make it's way into my socks and my feet start to feel wet. I try to clean off my shoes against a truck tire, only to realize that they are also covered in smashed up, rotten apples, making me smell like a bottle of cheap salad dressing. I'm in Gavere, Belgium, in the team parking lot of the Superprestige cyclocross race that is held in this town of only 13,000. Attendance for the race is expected to surpass 50,000, and is being held in a military base, that is adjacent to an apple orchard (hence the mud and stench on my shoes). But I'm not here to learn about cyclocross. I'm here to learn about the inner workings of post-Tour criteriums. Jurgen Mettepenningen, owner and general manager of the Marlux-Napoleon Games team owned one of these criteriums until recently [along with a Superprestige cyclocross race and a huge outdoor music festival] so I've asked to speak with him on the matter. So while I'm here to learn about these weird pseudo-races that are more WWE than UCI, I've lear something else already instead. At cyclocross races, all interviews are done pre-race in campers and RVs. The insides of those vehicles are pristine, and I'm about to foul one of them up with my muddy shoes. The press officer for another team sees me struggling with the caked on mud and applesauce on my shoes. He points to a perfectly clean white towel by the door of he RV, and tells me to take my shoes off before I go in, rather than worry about cleaning them. He does this in a gentle tone that he most likely reserves for stubborn farm animals or humans who sustained severe brain injuries. Lesson learned.

I step into the team's RV and am amazed by how clean and tidy it is. The smell of embrocation and cologne in the vehicle is beyond anything I could have anticipated. My nose hairs are promptly scorched. We sit down and begin to talk about these criteriums, a subject that until recently, few fans outside of Europe knew much about. These events/races/whatever you want to call them are perhaps more like fast bicycle parades that allow locals to see cycling stars in their home town. Continental pros rub elbows with Tour de France jersey and stage winners, as they all pretend to race one another. It's hardly racing, it's a spectacle, and one that can be profitable. As Robbie Mcewen once told Cycling Weekly,  "A good Tour gives you glory and satisfaction, crits give you the money. You could make a quarter of a million euros in a month." I would soon learn that it's also profitable for those who run these events. 

You own a cyclocross team, you've owned and operated criteriums and cyclocross races. Did you grow up in the world of cycling?
Not at all. I grew up as a football [soccer] player. I played until I was 26. I played in the third division, always as captain. But I had problems with my knee, and then I would sometimes go out and drink with my friends too....not good for a football player. 

Were you interested in cycling when you played football?
Not at all. The first race I ever saw was in 2002. It was a cyclocross race, the world championships. I was injured, so I could only stay home and watch TV. I ended up watching a lot of cycling, and I saw how many people were at these cyclocross races. This was early in the year, the end of the cyclocross season. By that November, I started my own cyclocross race. That was Bolleke Cross. But eventually I had to make a choice: run races or run a team. I chose to run a team. 

You also owned and ran the post-Tour criterium in St Niklaas. I've always been curious about those races.
Yes, but it....look, it's not a criterium. It's not a race. It's a show. There's no prize money or anything. 

Right, but those events are still interesting to me for that very reason. That they look like races, but aren't. How did you go about running them and getting the riders? Did you speak and deal directly with teams? Or do you contact riders and their agents?
No, it all goes through a single person in Holland who oversees the whole thing. He contacts the riders, and he has them at his disposal. So I would call him and say: hey, I want the yellow jersey, I want this guy and this other guy..I want the green jersey...whatever. Heworks with the riders and their agents. Sometimes you can make a deal, sometimes you can't with some riders. But it all goes through him, the name of the company is Cycling Service, and he makes all of those criteriums posible. 

Did you pay the riders directly?
No, payments go through that company as well.

How much did it cost you to have the yellow jersey at your event? 
I don't want to say the exact amount...but I'll say that it was more than €50,000 for the yellow jersey. 

How is the outcome decided? Does this person who secures all the riders for all the races weigh in? Do the riders ever voice an opinion?
No. I always picked, based on what would be best for the event. But of course, you don't just pick the yellow jersey to have him come in tenth. No, you have him in the top three in a sprint or something. Because it's a festival, and you want to make people happy. You have to put on a good show for them. 

What does the day consist of for the riders?
The stars are in a parade, they ride through town in a convertible to wave at fans, and then there's the event itself. The criterium. They ride for maybe 60 kilometers. It's not really fast, at least not for them. There are some breaks, and the last five laps are close to real cycling. But yes, before the race I was the one that decided who was going to be one through five in the end. 

These events are very popular, more like town festivals. But the audience doesn't pay to get in, right?
They don't, it's free for them. 

So how did you make money?
The city where you have the event pays you, and you have sponsors as well, which can pay a lot of money for a good event. And mine was the best in Belgium. We had the yellow jerseys, we had Cancellara, Vino, Froome...we had the best riders. But I sold the race to focus on my team, and the new owner is doing a great job...so he's happy and I'm happy. And the fans still get a great show, which is what it's all about. 

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Marginalia

Go buy some socks!

The final stage in the 2016 Giro Rosa today and a group of riders, none of them dangerous in the GC, were allowed to get away.

Nine leaders escaped the peloton, among them Riejanne Markus (Liv-Plantur), the third time in a break this race, last year’s stage 6 winner Mayuko Hagiwara (Wiggle-High5) and Maria Giuli Confalonieri (Lensworld-Zannata), who finished on the podium twice in the 2016 Giro Rosa already and was obviously looking for a third podium place when joining the break.

A group of six riders wanted to bridge the gap to the lead group, but ended up in a chasse patate and were brought back by the peloton at kilometer 70. Rabo-Liv’s Lucinda Brand, who’s been practicing her bunch sprints this Giro Rosa, and Canyon-SRAM’s Barbara Guarischi, 2015 Giro Rosa stage 1 winner, were represented in that group.

The GPM climb reduced the lead group to six riders, but Rabo-Liv’s Thalita de Jong didn’t wait for the sprint and left them behind on the descent.

After three podium places for Anna van der Breggen (Rabo-Liv), one for teammate Kasia Niewiadoma and a second place for De Jong herself in the prologue, the world cyclocross champion finally delivered Rabo-Liv a last-minute stage win in the 2016 Giro Rosa.

A second place for Markus added to the Dutch party, while Confalonieri indeed took her third podium place today.

A couple of minutes later, Megan Guarnier (Boels-Dolmans) crossed the finish line, knowing she did it!

MEGAN GUARNIER IS THE 2016 GIRO ROSA WINNER!

2016 Giro Rosa stage 9
1. Thalita de Jong (Rabo-Liv)
2. Riejanne Markus (Liv-Plantur)
3. Maria Giulia Confalonieri (Lensworld-Zannata)
4. Ingrid Drexel (Astana)
5. Ane Santesteban (Alé Cipollini)

Check out the full results later on the CyclingTips results page.

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The next Women’s WorldTour race is La Course by le Tour the France on Sunday July 24.

USA Cycling announced Thursday the full squad of athletes competing in the cycling events at the 31st Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro this August. Three-time Olympian Taylor Phinney, two-time Olympic gold medalist in the individual time trial, Kristin Armstrong, and bronze medalist at the 2015 road world championships in Richmond, Megan Guarnier (Boels-Dolmans) headline a team that includes 10 Olympic veterans.

“This has been something we have been working towards for the last two quads to be honest,” Jim Miller, vice president of athletics at USA Cycling, told CyclingTips. “We think we are at a point where we have a lot of athletes who are maturing or who are at that age where they can produce these kinds of results.

“At the same time we have a coaching staff that has been together for six to eight years, sometimes longer, and all have Olympic games experience and all have been to that venue so they know what to expect. We think we have a coaching staff that can lead, but also put us into position maybe do something unprecedented.”

The women’s road team always seems to deliver at the Olympics however, and the 2016 games should be no different. The selection for the team was a hotly discussed topic heading into the season with a multitude of riders vying for one of three available spots. Guarnier had already secured her ticket to Rio by automatic selection, courtesy of her result at the world championships.

Mara Abbott, Evelyn Stevens, and Kristen Armstrong will accompany Guarnier, the current Women’s WorldTour leader, on the hilly road-race course in Rio. Stevens and Armstrong will also ride the individual time trial.

Armstrong, competing in her fourth consecutive Olympics is the two-time defending gold medalist in the event. Being coached by Miller created a glaring conflict of interest for the vice president.

“It is and to be honest I recuse myself from all women’s road and time trial selections outside of sending the call and sending information to the selection committee and setting up the call,” Miller said.

Though any number of women could have made their case to make the team, a notable absence from the team is the 2016 US women’s individual time trial champion Carmen Small.

“To be honest, everybody wants to go to the Olympics and because of the prestigious nature of it we have an obligation to fully vet all our criteria and all our nominees and potential nominees,” Miller said. “[The athletes] work hard to get to this point and we have an obligation to make sure we are nominating the best team we can. We have a selection criteria for an athlete to make an automatic selection and we have a discretionary selection criteria for how the selection committee has to objectively make subjective decisions.

“So at the end of the day, we end up going through every discipline and every event bullet point by bullet point and do [the athletes] check the boxes, do they not check the boxes until these are the nominees for this event.”

Small is able to appeal the decision to the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) should she choose to do so.

The men’s road team only earned two spots for Rio and Phinney will be joined by his BMC Racing teammate Brent Bookwalter. Phinney captured fourth in both the road race and individual time trial at the 2012 Olympics in London and Bookwalter will be making his Olympic debut.

“Making the selection for men’s road prior to the Tour de France is a nightmare,” Miller said. “You have no idea what is going to happen in the Tour, you have no idea what is going to happen in the first week. Making the decision prior to that is like ‘oh man that is a no win,’ but [the USOC] have to turn in the names to the IOC.

“They have a process which they work through when they receive names and based on the timeline for things that have to happen for them as well, outside of maybe men’s soccer I believe, I don’t think any entry was given any sort of exemption on submission date.”

Miller had asked the USOC for an exemption regarding nominating the men’s road and mountain bike teams.

Howard Grotts is the lone men’s mountain bike selection, while 2012 Olympian Lea Davison and Chloe Woodruff will represent the women. The mountain bike selection comes a week prior to the world championships being held in the Czech Republic possibly giving these athletes a boost of confidence.

The Olympic track team, which was announced in March, goes to Rio with expectations abound. The women’s team pursuit flew to an unprecedented gold medal at the world championships in February. Sarah Hammer, Kelly Catlin, Chloe Dygert, and Jennifer Valente look to further their success from the world championships with a solid performance in Rio. Hammer will also ride the women’s omnium event, which she rode in London and captured the silver medal in.

U.S. BMX riders also hold stellar medal potential at Rio with Nic Long and Alise Post both riding to bronze medals at the 2016 BMX world championships in Medellin, Colombia. Connor Fields, seventh at the 2012 Olympics, will also travel to Rio having earned a discretionary selection.

The road races and individual time trials open cycling competition at the 2016 Olympic games Aug. 6-7 at Fort Copacabana and Aug. 10 at Pontal in Barra, respectively. Track cycling begins August 11th at the Rio Olympic Velodrome in Barra and wraps up August 16th. Action then moves north to Deodoro for BMX August 17-19 at the Olympic BMX Centre, and mountain bike helps close the Olympics August 20-21 at the Olympic Mountain Bike Centre.

“It is the Olympics and winning world titles is difficult, but winning Olympic titles is another story all together,” Miller said. “That said we believe we are in a position where we have really good teams and really good riders and we think we are capable of doing something exceptional.”

Miller added, “It’s tough and their certainly a pressure cooker, but I think we can do something good.”

Full 2016 U.S. Olympic Cycling Team

Road
Taylor Phinney (BMC Racing Team): Men’s Road Race, Men’s Individual Time Trial
Brent Bookwalter (BMC Racing Team): Men’s Road Race, Men’s Individual Time Trial
Megan Guarnier (Boels Dolmans Cycling Team): Women’s Road Race*
Mara Abbott (Wiggle-High5): Women’s Road Race
Evelyn Stevens (Boels Dolmans Cycling Team): Women’s Road Race, Women’s Individual Time Trial
Kristin Armstrong (TWENTY16 p/b SHO-AIR): Women’s Road Race, Women’s Individual Time Trial

Mountain Bike
Lea Davison (Specialized Factory Racing)
Chloe Woodruff (Team Stan’s NoTubes-Pivot)
Howard Grotts (Specialized Factory Racing)

Track
Sarah Hammer Women’s Omnium*, Women’s Team Pursuit
Kelly Catlin (NorthStar Development): Women’s Team Pursuit
Chloe Dygert (TWENTY16 p/b SHO-AIR): Women’s Team Pursuit
Jennifer Valente (TWENTY16 p/b SHO-AIR): Women’s Team Pursuit
Ruth Winder (U.S. National Team): Women’s Team Pursuit
Matt Baranoski (Custom Velo): Men’s Keirin
Bobby Lea Custom Velo): Men’s Omnium

BMX
Nic Long (Haro Bikes-Dans Comp)*
Corben Sharrah (Daylight Cycle Co.)*
Connor Fields (Chase BMX-Monster Energy)
Alise Post (Redline USA)*
Brooke Crain {Haro Bikes-Dans Comp)

*automatic nomination

All nominations to the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team are subject to approval by the United States Olympic Committee.

Argyle Armada author Mark Johnson has spent the last two years researching and writing a comprehensive look at doping, called “Spitting in the Soup,” published by VeloPress. I’ve been hearing about this book for a good year and I’ve been eagerly awaiting its release. Johnson is not only an immensely talented photographer, but he’s an accomplished writer as confirmed by his Ph.D. in literature. He’s the right guy to examine not just the history of doping but its place within the history of sport—Padraig. Q) A lot of books have been written about dopers. Why another? A)  A lot of good books have been written about individual athletes who doped. Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton, Ben Johnson, David Millar, José Canseco—they all either wrote or were the subject of books about their individual acts. I was interested in the larger historical context of doping. Turning to chemicals to push human performance has always been essential to sports—especially pro sports that got their start in the late 1800s. I wanted to understand how and why doping became an act of moral deviance, a crime against self and society. What happened to make doping a categorical evil? Olympic and pro-level athletes are both more genetically blessed and victory-obsessed than the rest of us. Deviance from the social and genetic norm is what makes elite athletes the best. How was it that taking drugs became unacceptable amongst a group of people whose very life path is a screw you to the social expectations and self doubts binding the rest of us?   Another paradox that fascinated me was why did doping in sport become diabolical at the same time doping for better human performance became normalized in society at large? In the 1950s Americans and Europeans adopted mood enhancing tranquilizers like Miltown and day-brightening amphetamines like Benzedrine and Dexedrine with wild enthusiasm. You could even go into a bar and order a Miltini—a vodka martini with a couple of Miltowns in the place of olives.  The normalization of drugs as an unremarkable part of everyday life continued unabated through the 70s. And we are still full gas on the drug pedal today. More than 6 percent of American kids are on stimulants like Adderall—an amphetamine—often in the interest of higher school performance. Of the 46 million prescriptions for ADHD stimulants written in the United States in 2010, 23 million were for kids. By 2014 stimulant prescriptions were up to 58 million, and 65 percent of the adults with ADHD drug prescriptions don’t even have a diagnosis for the condition. We shove speed down our gullets by the shovel full, and then go into moral meltdown over doped bike racers. That is a paradox I wanted to understand.     Q) In the early days of bike racing, taking drugs to finish a six day race or Paris-Roubaix was no big deal. What altered opinions about chemical tools? A) Especially in a sport like cycling, technology has always been part of the athlete’s quest to create an uneven playing field—one where the winner is better fed, trained, rested, and equipped than all their competitors. After all, the spirit of elite sport is exercising the pure will to win. Until the 1960s, drugs were an unremarkable part of the rider’s technical toolkit. At the turn of the century, for example, press reports of six day races and marathons describe athletes taking drugs as evidence of their commitment to craft. At the 1904 Olympics, drug-taking American athletes were celebrated as proof that the New World man was not afraid to embrace technology to distinguish himself from tradition-bogged Europeans. There was definitely a nationalistic flavor to some of our celebration of doping. While track and field organizations and the International Olympic Committee dropped a few sentences into their regulations about doping in the late 1920s and mid-1930s, these were not strictures against doping as an inherently evil act, but rather warnings against an inherently professional practice. In fact, from the time the modern Olympics started in 1896, Olympic organizers recommended that cycling not be part of the games because it was an inherently professional sport. The Olympics were all about protecting amateurs; what pros did to ply their trade did not matter as long as professionalism did not creep into the Olympics. It wasn’t until the 1960s that Olympic organizers started to expand the frame of reference and doping became a risk to not only amateur status, but also moral and personal health. The transformation came about for a few reasons. In Europe a couple of deaths focused attention on the health risks of doping and inspired pan-European sports and medicine organizations to reconsider whether or not it was a good thing for athletes to take drugs. One of those deaths took place at the 1960 Rome Olympics when a Danish cyclist named Knud Enemark Jensen suffered heat stroke during the team time trial and was placed in a broiling tent for two hours until he died. While the press and a growing group of concerned sports doctors blamed his death on amphetamines, there was no evidence that he had in fact taken stimulants. Heat stroke and bad trauma care killed Jensen. However, for the media, even though it was based on sheer rumor, doping was a better story because it combined fear and sensationalism into an irresistible package. Beginning with Jensen’s death, performance-enhancing drugs began their transformation into a source of dread. The seeds of today’s global anti-doping infrastructure and bureaucracy were also sown in the 1960s. The media invention of the story of performance enhancing drugs as weapons of mass destruction is really fascinating, and it’s thread I follow throughout the book.   Q) You mentioned the origins of European and American anti doping. How have Europe and the United States approached the problem differently? A) The Europeans were paternalistic. The Americans were pragmatic—as long as no one else was being hurt, and business was good, we had little problem with doping. In 1965, Belgium...

Grace insisted the bananas were out to get her. Today she got her proof.

Warning: Reducing intensity can be habit forming. Please consult your CrossFit trainer immediately.

You have to do Fran today.

Stop reading, close your eyes and really think about that for a moment.

Note the freefall feeling in your chest, the sweaty palms and the subtle changes in your breathing.

Now consider this statement:

You have to do Fran in less than 12 minutes today.

I bet you suddenly don’t feel nervous at all. You might even view the reps as a warm-up for another workout.

Same weight, same reps, same workout—different results.

Intensity burns. It tastes like a mouthful of old pennies soaked in battery acid. It makes you dizzy. It causes you to writhe around on the ground trying to work the misery out of your muscles. It usually requires a period spent on your back or butt, and sometimes it sends your lunch back the way it came in. Intensity gets caught in your throat and keeps you hacking hours after the workout ends.

Intensity also brings results. Push someone out of the comfort zone and physiology adapts. Do that regularly and fitness improves dramatically. After more than 15 years of workouts on CrossFit.com and six years of the CrossFit Games Open, we can make that statement with certainty backed by data.

Discomfort creates adaptation, but it can be very tempting to avoid the continuous discomfort needed to keep driving adaptation—even as a CrossFit athlete who knows its rewards.

Repetition creates habit, and you can adjust to almost anything—even fairly unpleasant stuff like Fran. I’m sure The Man in the Iron Mask was pretty uncomfortable for the first period of his imprisonment, but after a few years of metal, he was probably well used to flattening out his sandwiches so they would fit through the mouth slot.

Same deal with fitness. As we all know, “beginner’s gains” in CrossFit are the reward athletes are given simply for ditching inactivity or a stagnant fitness routine in favor of a superior regimen. When beginner’s gains evaporate and the nose must go right to the grindstone for sustained improvement in CrossFit, it can be tempting to get comfortable and step back from intensity. Not all the way back—just enough to take the edge off. Satisfaction with current output can reduce discomfort significantly—and limit results—while the quest for further improvements would bring great reward but also renewed acquaintance with that deep burning sensation.

Reducing intensity can be as subtle as breaking up Fran’s 15 thrusters when we don’t have to. It’s a very minor reduction in effort, and almost no one notices—sometimes not even the athlete. Fran burns a bit less, and only 20 seconds are added to a PR time, giving him or her the opportunity to attribute the score to an off day, bad sleep or “that third burrito at lunch.”

Luckily, the athlete still stays far fitter than if he or she hadn’t done Fran, but slacking off a little can lead to slacking off a lot, which is equivalent to treating a CrossFit workout like a 20-minute roll through the sports section while plodding on the elliptical machine.

I realized I was cutting with the wrong side of a very sharp knife a few weeks back in a workout that forced me to push myself:

100 wall-ball shots
Do 13 burpees after any broken set; no resting while holding the ball.

In that workout, my utter hatred of burpees forced me to complete my final set of 45 by pushing into the neighborhood of my physical limit. But my mental limit had come 30 reps into that last set, when I normally would have quit had the burpees not been present.

“I can’t finish this unbroken,” I thought before a coach saw me mentally crumbling and quickly advised that trading only 15 wall balls for 13 burpees plus 15 wall balls was a bad deal.

So I kept going, and while the 45th rep burned deeply, it was achievable. In fact, I had a few more in me. I had no idea—but my coach did.

The workout and the coach kicked me off the elliptical machine, so to speak, and they highlighted the fact that I’m capable of more than I think I am. I bet you’re more capable than you think you are, and your CrossFit coach knows it. Listen to him or her when you’re told to keep going and see what happens. When the coach says, “Do 5 more,” do 5 more—even if you think you’ll fail. I bet you won’t. I bet you’ll get fitter.

To get even further out of your CrossFit comfort zone, I’d encourage you to experiment with workouts similar to the wall-ball challenge detailed above.

Air Force, with 4 burpees preceding the work every minute, is a good example of a nowhere-to-hide workout.

Or try 500-meter rowing or 400-meter running repeats with a thruster penalty for every second under a certain challenging but achievable time.

Another option: Create a workout with a scheme about 2 reps out of your comfort zone and vow to do all sets unbroken. Fran at 23-17-11 might present an excellent challenge even if it lacks the mathematical grace of the original prescription.

Or you can create workouts in which a certain number of reps must be completed every 60 seconds. If you pick the right amount of work for your fitness level—say 15 wall-ball shots and 10 heavy kettlebell swings, for example—you’re going to have to work hard and go unbroken to get the work done in each minute.

To reap the greatest benefits from CrossFit, you have to be willing to push yourself, to be uncomfortable, to suffer for reward. And most of us are most of the time. The whiteboard and the rivalries thereon are powerful motivational tools. Still, a 5-minute Fran can become a habit if you let your mind trick you into dropping the barbell well before you need to.

Remember: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, while objects at rest tend to head to the chalk bucket.

About the Author: Mike Warkentin is the managing editor of the CrossFit Journal and the founder of CrossFit 204.

“It’s okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise you’re just crazy.“

-Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia founder

Jeff Koontz is a Pittsburgh-based Masters racer, who has been competing for 20 years. He currently races for the UPMC/ProBikes team. This post initially appeared on Medium; he gave us permission to publish it here, as well. It has been edited, for style and clarity. Jeff can be found on Twitter, here.

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I’ve always loved racing criteriums. Beyond having better physiology for the speed and tactics of a criterium, rather than a hilly road course, I love the mental engagement of criteriums. I love being constantly aware of the next corner, who is moving up, who is falling back, how many laps to the sprint — a sensory overload that is truly thrilling.

I love that at critical times in a crit, I can also slow things down mentally and make tactical decisions to set up a good finish, or just avoid trouble. I love watching Rahsaan Bahati do clinical video analysis on his races. I love the whole Manual for Speed “American Criterium” project.

Criterium racing to me is American bike racing at it’s finest. I wish we would embrace it more as our own.

I also know crit racing is dangerous. Maybe that’s part of the fun. Risks are ever present when you are doing laps of a couple of small downtown blocks and taking 90-degree corners with 100 other racers. I can live with the risk. I’ve been racing long enough to know the odds.

I guess knowing the potential for crashing doesn’t make my broken wrist sit any better with me.

In hindsight, it’s easy to have a lot of regrets about going to the masters national championships. But I’m going to try to tell my story without a lot of judgement.

I raced nationals a few years ago in Bend, Oregon. It didn’t go well for me, physically, as the unusually warm day and travel across the country got to me. When it was announced that the 2016 nationals would be held in Winston-Salem, I saw an opportunity for redemption — within driving distance.

On May 7, I registered for the criterium, and saw a lot of other people had as well, with only a few spots left in the field that would approach 125 riders registered.

I checked out the course online. It looked okay, a flat three-corner course, but even the sharpest corner had ample room when I checked it out on Google Street View.

On May 20, less than a week before nationals, I received an email with the usual pre-race information, however, a few paragraphs down was this: “As some of you have seen, USA Cycling has changed the masters’ critierium course. Due to changes to the original course imposed by local affected businesses in the last week, USA Cycling determined the original course was no longer suitable for racing for our riders. To remedy the situation, we have moved the criterium. The new course is less than half a mile from the original. The new criterium map can be found here.”

The course was relocated to the Dixie Fairgrounds. This is not the first time USA Cycling has had issues with the viability of anNational championship course, the most infamous incident being the national cyclocross championships in Austin, Texas, which were halted by a local “Heritage Tree” group. Ultimately, the final day was pushed from Sunday to Monday in order to accommodate a course rerouting.

The new route in Winston-Salem used the Dixie Fairgrounds’ “Midway” as a substantial part of the course, utilizing two of the four lanes of traffic on two roads outside the Fairgrounds, which allowed regular vehicular traffic to continue, via lane reductions on the other two lanes.

The new course, especially with the carnival tops on satellite view, looked interesting to say the least. The only real question I had in looking at it was how it would flow, coming through the start finish and making a quick right-left onto a much narrower access road.

Arriving early on race day, I noted the course fencing. From the exit of the 180-degree turn to the right turn on Deacon Blvd, the course was fenced off, limiting the use of the full width of the roadways, and funneling the race through the turns with little margin for error.

The racing timetable was set up pretty tightly, and as a result, no riders on race day would be able to take even one lap of the course before lining up for their start.

In fact, racers would be asked to leave the course before completing a full cool-down lap. The rider staging chute filled up early, as riders recognized that starting position would be key to avoiding crashes and not getting gapped off the back. Riders sat in the chute for anywhere from 15–30 minutes prior to their starts.

I had some friends in the 35–39 race earlier in the day to watch, and gain intel from. The crashing didn’t take long to begin, with a large number of riders heading to the pits early on. My friend Jason Mount got caught in the first major crash and took his free lap, along with many others.

I saw guys on the local Pennsylvania GPOA team, such as Colin Sandberg, riding Mavic neutral bikes, and others, like John Heffner, just taking free laps later in the race. Jason just avoided a second crash in front of him, before finally being crashed out for good with about four laps to go. From that point forward, there was a crash on those first “S” turns every lap until the finish of the race.

They delayed the 40–44 men’s race start to adjust the barriers through those corners, to allow a little more room for error. I do think it helped, as during the 35–39 race, it wasn’t an “if”, but a “when” you would go down in those corners.

I think it’s pretty natural to feel a little nervous watching, as the 35–39 race had only 56 registered, but knowing that my race, the 45–49 category, had 124 lining up.

I definitely wanted to get a good start in the front, to avoid any carnage. After a warm up on the trainer, I went over to the course where there was room to do some efforts on the outside of the 180-degree turn.

People began lining up in the staging chute even earlier than I expected, so I went over and lined up in the corral, about 25 minutes before the race. USA Cycling, and the announcers, thought we had 122 in the field, but as roll call went on in staging, it seemed there were a lot of no-shows. Looking at the official results, 27 riders paid $105 and did not take the start. I heard at least one person say they didn’t take the start because it wasn’t worth the risk, but that was just one.

Given that temperatures started to climb to 90 degrees as my 1pm start approached (my bike computer read even higher), I was concerned about the time sitting exposed to the sun in the saddle. As we watched the conclusion of the 40–44 race, another unfortunate accident happened. A group of three riders had established what would be the winning break as they re-entered the fairgrounds.

When they came off the 180, and before they approached the S-turn onto the final straight (for the win), one of the riders, Phillip Tintsman, saw his front wheel go out from under him.

Another racer, John Murazak, also crashed into unsecured steel fencing that was held together with zip ties in other areas, but not in this corner. His chest was sliced open and was bleeding a lot. I learned later that he broke his clavicle and fractured two vertebrae, requiring three hours of surgery to clear out all the damaged tissue.

This caused our race to be delayed for an additional 15 minutes. Fortunately, I had my wife with a spare bottle nearby to keep me hydrated and pour water over my back. I was in good position in the second row, ready to go and stay out of trouble. The officials then told us that we were going to ride a neutral lap (which had not happened for any previous race that day), and the race would be live when we crossed the start finish.

The neutral lap was only neutral in that the moto controlled the speed, although on the back stretch riders were on either side of the moto and actually passing the moto while getting yelled at.

Upon re-entry to the fairgrounds, the pack was dangerously wide going into the tight barriers of the Midway complex. Once we crossed the start-finish line and the race went live, there was a crash in Turn 1 that was deemed serious enough to stop the race at the start-finish line. We again waited in the 90-degree heat for another 15 minutes, with the officials promising us 30 minutes of racing when we restarted. Bottles again were passed around to help cool people off, and after that 15 minutes or so, we restarted, with no neutral lap this time.

The race was predictably fast, and I felt good. In places, the course seemed to have good flow, but going from the start finish through the right turn onto Deacon Avenue was always a little sketchy, and there was a significant pavement transition between the fairgrounds and the road there.

After the fast right turn onto Shorefair Drive, the course went downhill; as it was the widest part of the course, the pack also grew pretty wide across the road. I found a lot of momentum as the course swept right in through the fairground gates and then after the left, there was a lot of jostling for positioning into the 180 and beyond. I saw about four of five laps of this.

The bunch was wide again on Shorefair going downhill, and then there was carnage in front of me. No where to go, instincts did what they did, and I ended up over the handlebar.

Initially, I thought I came out of it pretty well. I went to pick up the bike, assess the damage, and head to the pits. The bike looked fine, but I realized something was gravely wrong with my left hand. I knew pretty much right away that my wrist was broken, and I got up on my bike and tried to get back to the medical tent with one hand. Course marshals sent us the wrong way, and the course was barriered off in a way that you could not get into the fairgrounds unless you were on the course, or at an entrance for parking. (This also meant spectators couldn’t walk the course.) Everyone in the crash was pretty frustrated that they couldn’t get to medical very easily.

I looked for my wife and eventually made it to the medical tent where I had a wait, as other riders in the pile-up were being treated. One guy had really bad road rash, notably bad. Someone’s bike laid nearby, the frame completely folded in half. They did a quick assessment of my wrist and applied some ice. As I sat there, I started to feel nauseous, and I saw my world closing in. I was alert enough to inform the medical staff I was close to blacking out, and they got me down on the ground with some ice packs. I never fully lost consciousness, and I cooled down enough to get to our car so that my wife could drive over to the ER at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

I was not the first or last cyclist they were to see that day. The wait to be seen in the ER was pretty long, measured in hours, not minutes. As I would later come to understand, the bike race was a major contributing factor to my wait, as the ER staff was not expecting (or aware) that the national championships would amount to “men trying to knock other men off their bikes”  — one medical aid’s word-for-word impression of what bike racing must have been about that particular day.

During my treatment there, which saw me initially in the Fast Track area, and then moved to a room for further treatment, I overheard medical staff lamenting the bike race, asking why nobody put them on alert, and how it had taken a normal Thursday for them and turned it into a medical triage situation. The medical staff was not happy.

I’ve only been to one emergency room after a bike race, and in that instance, mine was the only incident in that race needing medical attention. In this case, the doctor seeing me later in the evening, after I was moved out of Fast Track, said I was one of four cyclists he was treating at 9pm that night in his “pod” alone.

In the waiting room I met the daughters of an older male cyclist from California, who had multiple injuries during one of the 65+ or 70+ races, including some serious open wounds.

I heard people recount the injuries to John Murazak, the aforementioned rider who was impaled by an unsecured square metal fence protrusion. The stories went on. If you were at the hospital on May 26, you would probably question what we are doing competing in this sport at all. I am pretty certain that no one from USA Cycling knew the extent of medical issues at the hospital, as their duties seem to end when they record your race number at the medical tent.

I signed a waiver understanding the risks of bike racing. And when these things happen, we dust them off as “well, that’s bike racing.” I have no problem accepting those risks, and if my injuries had occured at a race like Somerville or some other race I know and love, that’s all part of the risk I can accept.

I don’t know how to feel about this particular race, run by our national governing body. Maybe, for everything that happened, it can easily be explained away as “that’s bike racing,” too.

I’ve tried to recount the race as directly as possible, without too much opinion or conjecture. I’m not looking for sympathy, and I don’t know that there are any meaningful answers to be had.

But I also thought this story should be told. The masters national criterium championship was a miserable day, for many.

Criterium courses aren’t the type of thing that should be thrown together at the last minute, particularly not when a national title is on the line. There are many great criteriums in the United States, with courses that are well regarded for their designs, including those at Somerville, in New Jersey, and the old Chris Thater course, in New York, to name a few.

These are events that are sanctioned by USA Cycling — officials at these events also work at national championship events. And while it’s not the responsibility of the commissaires to design courses, it seems there should be more communication among parties about what makes for a national-level course.

The masters national criterium championship that USA Cycling hosted in Winston-Salem, which changed venues in the weeks before it was held, seemed as though there was no forethought about course flow, or designing a challenging course that would reward a deserving winner. Instead, the main determining factor seemed to be finding a location where an event could be held on closed roads. This happens at local events, but you’d hope for more from a national championship.

In April, USA Cycling asked University of Stirling academic Dr. Paul Dimeo to chair its Anti-Doping Committee, a new advisory board set up to support USA Cycling it is efforts to “reduce banned doping practices within amateur and professional cycling in America.”

This week, USA Cycling asked Dimeo to step down, after comments made to the London Times suggesting that the use of erythropoietin (EPO) could be used safely to boost athletes’ recovery and performance.

Dimeo, a senior lecturer at the University of Stirling, and author of A History of Drug Use in Sport: 1876-1976, told the Times in a May 27 article that many regulations set forth by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) are outdated and ineffective.

“What made sense [in the 20th century] is no longer viable, practically or idealistically,” Dimeo told the Times. “We now live in a world of technology, commerce and performance, where drugs could be safely used for recovery and performance if only the rules were relaxed. Of course, people will react with dismay. But it is time that we had a proper 21st-century debate on the issue, rather than sticking to what was set in stone almost 60 years ago.”

In the interview, Dimeo suggested that EPO could be used to aid recovery, citing studies which state that low doses of EPO improve cardiac function, and also questioned the banned use of blood transfusions, which boost oxygen-carrying capacity.

“It’s safe, of course, because it happens all the time in hospitals,” Dimeo said of blood transfusions. “They would help recovery between the stages of a bike race or rounds of a tennis tournament. “What is the harm if we know there is a doctor on hand, that everything is clean and sterilized and the blood comes from the right place? People will say it’s cheating, because not everybody can get access to that, but that’s not the same as saying it’s harmful.”

On Thursday, USA Cycling announced that Dimeo would no longer be part of its Anti-Doping Committee, saying, “his recent comments advocating the legalization of certain doping practices made it clear that he does not share our fundamental views regarding eliminating doping from sport through the rigorous application of well-established anti-doping efforts.”

On Friday, Dimeo took to Twitter, challenging USA Cycling’s statement, writing, “I’ve never advocated legalization, just raised relevant questions.”

Thanks for all the messages. Here is our discussion of anti-doping in US cycling and its challenges https://t.co/oUvLrY0UZy

— Paul Dimeo (@pauldimeo2) June 3, 2016

Professor Roger Pielke, who teaches Sports Governance at the University of Colorado, Boulder, believes this was the wrong move for USA Cycling.

In an open letter to the federation, written before USA Cycling’s announcement, Pielke maintains that advisors are simply that — put in place to advise, and offer diverse opinions — and that USA Cycling should be able to make its own decisions after taking all viewpoints into account.

“Part of what we academics do is make people uncomfortable by floating ideas and proposals that some may be uncomfortable with,” Pielke wrote. “That is okay, as every so often we hit onto worthwhile proposals. Oftentimes, we don’t (and are just ignored or laughed at) and that is okay, too.

“Sports bodies have struggled mightily in recent years with soliciting and receiving independent expert advice,” he continued. “You have a significant opportunity here to show the world how it should be done by offering strong backing for Paul. His views may not be yours, or those of some others on the committee or your sponsors, stakeholders, and engaged public — and that is fine. This issue of doping in sport is complex and disagreement is healthy.”

Dimeo is not alone in his views. In 2014, Oxford professor Julian Savulescu told CyclingTips that allowing some forms of doping would level the playing field and put resources to better use. Substances that occur naturally in the body, such as EPO, would be allowed, Savulescu argued, so long as they are used within healthy limits.

In his Times interview, Dimeo stated “There is a potential for the reconsideration of some drugs and that’s a debate we need to have.”

The full statement, from USA Cycling, dated June 2, 2016:

“

USA Cycling announced Thursday that Dr. Paul Dimeo will no longer participate on the recently formed USA Cycling Anti-Doping Committee after public comments made last week in the London Times challenging whether performance enhancing methods like blood doping and the use of EPO should be banned. USA Cycling concluded those views contradict USA Cycling’s position and could undermine the clear objectives of the Anti-Doping Committee.

The Committee, which was formed earlier this year, has the stated purpose: “The new Anti-Doping Committee will be comprised of experts who will help USA Cycling determine how it can best reduce banned doping practices within amateur and professional cycling in America. The committee’s focus will be to determine the optimal level of testing to cost effectively create a credible deterrent, recommend what other actions USA Cycling can take to reduce doping (e.g., education), and evaluate the effectiveness of USA Cycling’s anti-doping efforts over time.”

USA Cycling CEO Derek Bouchard-Hall said, “While we welcome dissenting opinion within our committee, the conversation must focus on the problem at hand: how to eliminate doping from American cycling. We fully respect Dr. Dimeo’s right to challenge the system and as an academic, it is important that he does. We in fact knew he often challenged the status quo. But his recent comments advocating the legalization of certain doping practices made it clear that he does not share our fundamental views regarding eliminating doping from sport through the rigorous application of well-established anti-doping efforts.

“We are thankful for the contributions he has made to our organization in the past, both from his research last year which helped us identify the extent of amateur doping in American cycling and his help in forming the committee.”

What Does it Cost to Make a Running Shoe?

Fashion companies are often accused of inflating their prices – perhaps none moreso than sneaker brands. After all, how much can it possibly cost to slap together some rubber and fabric in Vietnam? 

Solereview recently took a closer look at what it actually costs to manufacture sneakers. And while some are certainly overcharging (the biggest price of these Berlutis might be the shame in wearing something so ugly), companies such as Nike and Adidas are working on surprisingly thin margins. 

On a pair of $100 running shoes, Solereview estimates Nike is profiting ~$5 per sale. $22 goes to producing the sneakers, then another $23 for shipping, marketing, and miscellaneous overhead. That leaves about a 10% profit on a $50 wholesale price for Nike. 

And the retailer? Ostensibly, there’s a $50 profit margin, but once you account for business expenses and discounts, they only do a little better at $6 per sale (largely because they’re giving up 25% off-the-bat for markdowns). On the Adidas side, margins are even thinner. 

Lesson: it’s hard to make money selling $100-200 sneakers made abroad. 

You can read the full article here. 

(via Valet)

At the start of the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals, TNT’s David Aldridge asked Warriors coach Steve Kerr how his team had wrested the lead from the Thunder. “We started trusting each other. We made a couple threes, but more importantly we started moving the ball,” Kerr said. “I thought [third-string center Anderson] Varejao made a couple of brilliant plays for us.”

I was never a big Tito Ortiz fan.  He was a very polarizing character and fighter.  People either loved him or hated him.  “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.  I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan
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In a sign that the 2016/17 cyclocross season is around the corner, teams are starting to make announcements about sponsors and rosters. Joining those ranks is the JAM Fund, which has just named its riders for the coming race season.

It’s no secret that Ellen Noble has moved from the JAM Fund program to Aspire Racing, joining Jeremy Powers, who we spoke with recently about his new teammate. Aside from filling Noble’s spot on the Elite squad, a second rider was added to the Elite roster and two riders were added to the JAM Fund’s development program.

See who will fly the Jam Fund flag in the press release, below.

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New Riders Named to JAM Fund Elite and Development Teams

JAM Fund is excited to name two new riders to its elite cyclocross team. Rhys May of Athens, Georgia and Natalie Tapias of Brooklyn, New York are relocating to Western Massachusetts to train and race for the JAM Fund.;

May was born in JAM’s backyard in Northampton, Massachusetts but has lived in Georgia since she was ten. She started racing cross four years ago on a singlespeed steel Univega. Since then, she started her own small grassroots cycling team got a coach and drove around the country racing cross. She participated in Cycle-Smart Cyclocross Camp for the past two summers where she met JAM Fund members. Now she returns to her birthplace to race for the JAM Fund elite team.

“I got an email that said we have a spot open for you on JAM if you’re interested,” May said. “And I’m crying, jumping up and down, and of course I’m interested. They asked if I can make the move, and I said, see you soon!”

Tapias has a unique athletic history as a highly disciplined ballet dancer who made the switch to cycling two years ago. She fell in love with cross while watching Cross Vegas and raced almost every weekend this past season. She also races on the road and just competed at Speed Week, a series of pro criteriums in the Southeast, when JAM made her the offer to join the team.

JAM Fund Coach Al Donahue says May and Tapias show a lot of promise.

“This will change my life,” Tapias said. “Being with JAM Fund will help me become the best cross racer I can be and achieve things I don’t think I could do on my own.”

“Both of them are newer to elite racing and we are going to take a multi-year view on their progression,” Donahue said. “The main reason they were selected is the willingness to immerse themselves in the team environment. This means moving to Easthampton and expressing intentions of making CX their primary focus for the next two years. I would say these riders will give us an idea of how much of an environmental factor the program has on turning ambition into performance.”

May and Tapias join Scott Smith and Jack Kisseberth who continue to represent JAM’s elite squad. Three-time U.S. National Cyclocross Champion Ellen Noble, who raced for JAM for the past two years, has graduated to the pro ranks and will be racing along with four-time National Cyclocross Champion Jeremy Powers on his team, Aspire Racing.

JAM Fund is also adding two new riders to its development team. Trent Blackburn of Wilmington, North Carolina and Ian Gielar of Keene, New Hampshire are relocating to Western Massachusetts to train and compete in road and mountain bike races this summer. Blackburn and Gielar received JAM Fund Grants last year. Chris Niesen and Case Butler continue racing on the development squad for a second year with Niesen showing especially good improvement at Ontario, Canada’s Paris to Ancaster gravel road race last month.

In addition to the four new team members, JAM Fund has made a new partnership with Kask helmets for the 2016 cross season. JAM Fund continues its longtime partnership with the Northampton Cycling Club. Riders interested in joining future JAM Fund development teams are encouraged to join NCC and volunteer in its events.

“The idea is to have people race for the club first and then come race for JAM,” Donahue said.

JAM Fund is a non-profit cycling development program founded by Powers, Donahue and Mukunda Feldman. Their purpose is to create the next generation of cyclocross pros and good ambassadors of the sport. The organization’s biggest fundraiser is the Grand Fundo, a challenging scenic ride through the Pioneer Valley, on Saturday, July 16. Register for the event and ride your bike with the new JAM Fund cyclists, alumni and friends.

JAM Fund will have more in-depth profiles on the new riders out in the coming weeks.

The post JAM Fund Announces 2016 Team Roster appeared first on Cyclocross Magazine - Cyclocross News, Races, Bikes, Photos, Videos.

The Zika outbreak may be worse than doctors initially thought. Does that mean the 2016 Olympic Games should be moved from Rio? (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

The Michigan Wolverines are leading the charge on staging satellite football camps across the country — and globe — to build their team’s brand. Not everyone is pleased with head coach Jim Harbaugh’s plan, though. And after increased participation in footraces for the past two decades, Americans have officially slowed down and are running less. Are fitness boot camps, yoga classes and CrossFit to blame? Also, with the Rio Olympics on the horizon, concerns over the Zika virus are growing. Should the International Olympic Committee consider moving the Games from Brazil?

John Niyo of the Detroit News and Rachel Bachman of the Wall Street Journal joined Bill Littlefield to discuss.

1. Jim Harbaugh’s World Tour

On April 28, the NCAA Board of Directors overturned the Div. I Council’s ban of satellite football camps. This move allowed college football coaches like Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh to continue making plans for camps around the country — and world. This summer, Michigan has established camps in Australia, American Samoa and Hawaii. Of course, not everyone is thrilled by the Wolverines’ initiatives — especially not coaches at schools in the South, another target location for Harbaugh’s camps. John Niyo wonders how big of a deal these camps are.

JN: I mean these camps do serve a purpose for families searching for college scholarships. … Now Harbaugh’s gone all Phileas Fogg with I think it’s up to 30-something stops now — 16 states, including Hawaii and Australia and Samoa. So I guess the question for you, Rachel and Bill, is: is there a problem here? Or is this just another sort of tax-exempt sitcom?

2. Millennials Have Ended The Running Boom

A recent study from the research group Running USA reports that the number of finishers in footraces declined by nine percent in 2015. Millennials make up the largest living generation, but their presence in running has decreased more than any other age group. Rachel Bachman explores some of the theories for this decline. 

RB: The jury’s sort of out on why this happened. One theory is that there are more and more other things to do to keep yourself in shape — anything from CrossFit to Yoga. Another theory floated is that Millennials just simply are not as competitive as older generations and didn’t really like entering races. So, let the debate ensue.

3. Zika Concerns Grow Ahead Of 2016 Olympics

The Olympics stories continue to roll in — and almost all are troubling. From multiple state-run doping scandals to bribes from Tokyo organizers to Brazil’s presidential impeachment. Yet another concern is the Zika virus. Will the Games in Rio de Janeiro help spread the virus worldwide? Bill Littlefield wonders if it’s time to move the 2016 Olympic Games from Rio.

BL: The bribery and the doping stories feel, to me, like business as usual. They’re sad, but the Zika thing, more dire, I think. Is it time to call Rio and say, ‘Hey, look, sorry, this isn’t going to work out? We’re gonna start a new precedent — we’re gonna spread the Olympic events around, say, half-a-dozen countries. Nobody goes broke, everybody gets a chance to be on TV, and that’s the way we’ll do it from here on in.’ What do you think?

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