Working an aid station at the Leadville 100 MTB last weekend, one of the coaches pointed out the women’s field seemed smaller than it used to be. Another coach, who was tracking down race results to confirm CTS Athlete Larissa Connors had won her second consecutive title, confirmed there were a total of 142 …
By CTS Athlete Fairlee Frey The string of texts from my KS-Kenda teammate Jen Malik more or less went like this: “Dude! There’s going to be a World Cup XC Eliminator event… in the United States… in like 2.5 weeks… in Georgia?…Wooo!! Wanna go??!!” Over the course of the next 9 minutes, we decided …
By Chris Carmichael CEO/Head Coach of CTS One of the most persistent questions throughout the 2018 Tour de France was: ‘Who is the leader of Team Sky?’ It is not that uncommon for a team to bring more than one rider capable of challenging for the yellow jersey, but it is uncommon for both general …
By Chris Carmichael CEO and Head Coach of CTS The Tour de France tried something new this year, in the form of two very short, very hard mountain stages, both ending with summit finishes. The first was Stage 11 in the Alps, a 108-kilometer race with four categorized climbs and virtually no flat valley roads. …
By Mara Abbott 2010, 2013 Giro Rosa Champion Olympian CTS Contributing Editor In July, the world’s cycling fans multiply. The phrase “yellow jersey” is bandied around in public. Here in the United States, you might even hear someone say “kilometers”. July is why I love cycling too, but my Tour de France watching habits are …
There are a lot of frustrated cyclists out there. It’s summer and maybe your fitness and performance aren’t where you expected them to be by this time of the year. We hear this scenario every summer from new athletes signing up for coaching. The year hasn’t gone as planned up to this point and …
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 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 …