It’s been a great week riding the Ride the Rockies cycling event in Colorado. The weather was great for riding and the people were incredible. Cyclists of all ages, shapes, sizes and skill levels rode together, helped each other out, and made new friends. As a coach I tend to pay attention to how …
I was talking with an athlete earlier this week and our conversation turned to the issue of weight, as it has during nearly every coaching conversation we’ve had in the past year. The athlete I was talking to is probably not that different from you. He has worked hard and improved significantly. His power at lactate …
By Mara Abbott, US Olympian – Cycling CTS Contributing Editor We’ve got a lot of muscle and plenty of power, but cyclists still don’t sit too high on the road-user food chain. If we want more respect – and the extra safety that can come along with it – we need to recognize we, as …
By Syd Schulz CTS Athlete and Pro Athlete “Listen to your body.” This is a common refrain in the world of athletics, but WHAT DOES IT MEAN AND HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY DO IT? I mean, seriously, this phrase really needs an addendum (or two or three). When people say “listen to your body” what …
By Adam St. Pierre CTS Ultrarunning Coach “Make sure you stretch before you run.” “Never stretch before you run, but always stretch after.” “Do some dynamic stretching before you run, and static stretch after you run, but never ballistic stretching.” There are a lot of ideas about stretching floating around the endurance running ether… let’s …
Choking on a cherry tomato wasn’t the way I wanted to go out. One night at the Amgen Tour of California Race Experience I got a cherry tomato lodged in my throat at the team dinner. I tried to swallow hard to get it down. I tried to cough. I tried to talk. Nothing worked. …
By Mara Abbott, Olympian, CTS Contributing Editor It has been almost two years since I left professional cycling. My chosen cycling sub-genre has always been road riding. Mountain biking is terrifying, track is worse, and the drop-in alone for a BMX race is clearly incomprehensible. Yet in my retirement, I have adopted a new cyclist …
By Adam St. Pierre, CTS Ultrarunning Coach Ultrarunning is often thought of as an older athlete’s game. Often, there are considerably more athletes in the 40+ age groups than the younger age groups, primarily because that’s the population more interested in running ultramarathons. But as parents run longer distances and inspire their children and …
The cycling community is always evolving, with veteran riders hanging up their wheels and beginner cyclists just starting with training for cycling. We see the complete range at our cycling camps and events, and as coaches we believe teaching the fundamentals is just as important as important as helping athletes take advantage of the latest …
By Mara Abbott, Olympian, yoga expert, and CTS Contributing Editor A yoga posture is the period at the end of a sentence. It may be important, but it is a very small part of the whole, signaling simply a brief space for pause before next phrase begins. The real meat of your yoga practice – …