I had a long conversation with a coaching colleague who gained a significant amount of belly fat and is working to regain his fitness and fit back into his normal cycling gear. I can commiserate. About 15 years ago I went through the same process, and having a belly for a while completely changed …
By Jason Koop, CTS Coaching Director Author “Training Essentials for Ultrarunning” During an interview at Wimbledon, tennis champion Serena Williams was asked what it was like to have athletes up their game in order to play her. Her answer is not only an insight into what has made her the dominant player of her …
By Mara Abbott Olympian and CTS Contributing Editor It may have been the opening for my entire cycling career – a super-cool upperclassman invited me to go mountain biking with her in my first weeks as an impressionable freshman still identifying as a swimmer. She said I should join Whitman College’s cycling team. Jane Rynbrandt …
By Darcie Murphy, CTS Ultrarunning Coach We’re told that the statistical chance of being struck by lightning is low. According to National Geographic in any one year your chance of being struck is about 1 in 700,000, and over a lifetime it’s 1 in 3,000. Still, if you’ve been caught unexpectedly by this powerful force …
Checking on your assumptions is one of the best things you can do with data. Many experienced athletes, myself included, are confident their training, recovery, and nutrition routines are solid because they were solid the last time they checked and they haven’t changed anything since. But everything has changed, maybe not in major ways, …
By Syd Schulz CTS Athlete and MTB Pro Training for enduro is a unique puzzle because you need high-end power for short stages that last as little as five minutes, while also having the endurance for long days on the bike (sometimes as long as seven hours!). The road version of endure is called timed …
Even though I am not fast enough to set KOMs in Colorado Springs, I still upload all my rides and off-bike activities to Strava. I like it. I rarely pin on a race number or even go on aggressive group rides, but I still have a competitive streak. Strava allows me to compete against …
By Mara Abbott, Olympian, CTS Contributing Editor Less than ten kilometers into this year’s Ride the Rockies, I bailed into the refuge of a hapless course marshal’s SUV. It was then, as I cranked the heat and downloaded a newspaper onto my phone, that I got my first inkling of just how awesome the week …
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 …