By Mara Abbott, Olympian and CTS Contributing Editor I waited two years for an interval workout. To be fair, those years were full: retiring from one sport, attempting to start a new one, injuring myself, and most of all, working on the perennial challenge of developing a mindset in which it didn’t matter if I …
Three Ways to Get The Most Out of the Fitness You Already Have One of the most common questions I get on social media or on my blog is this: how do I get faster? How do I get more skilled? Or, simply, how do I get better? No one ever asks, “How do I …
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. …
In the real world, whether you are riding uphill on paved or gravel roads, mountain bike trails, or in a triathlon, you have to have more than one speed. As much as I love power meters and training with power, an unfortunate side effect is that many athletes focus so intently on improving sustainable …
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 …