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 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 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 – …
By Mara Abbott, Olympian and CTS Contributing Editor My last column covered some of the mental benefits of a regular yoga practice. Here, I take the study of yoga for athletes to a level deeper and offer a few of the ways that the philosophical origins of yoga have influenced my athletic career. I do …
I’ve always been fascinated by the role of genetics in sport. Obviously, there’s the heredity aspect that sometimes helps children of great athletes become great athletes themselves. More practically for those who don’t win the DNA lottery, genes affect the way individuals respond to stimuli, potentially opening the door to even greater customization of …
By Mara Abbott, Olympian and CTS Contributing Editor My junior year of college, I spent a semester enrolled at a university in Mérida, Mexico. In part, I considered it an experiment in what would happen if I went out in the Real World where sports (forever and always swimming and at the time only recently, …
If endurance events were easy, would they be as much fun? For our tribe the answer is: No. We get excited by challenges that push us beyond our comfort zones. Our tribe is drawn to events other people consider insane, including running 100 miles above 10,000 feet in Leadville, CO; riding a road bike …
By Syd Schulz CTS Athlete and Pro MTB Racer When I first started mountain biking, it used to make me miserable, like, somewhat frequently. This was because mountain biking is hard and starting new things is hard and also because I wasn’t very confident in my own abilities. As a result, perceived failures (OMG …
(March 20, 2018 – Colorado Springs, CO) Cyclists can now register for the 2nd edition of the CTS Figueroa Mountain Gran Fondo, presented by Figueroa Mountain Brewing. The event, scheduled for November 10, 2018, in Santa Ynez, California, features beautiful routes through the Santa Ynez Valley and an ascent of the iconic Figueroa Mountain climb. Early …
I was listening to the radio on my way to work earlier this week and a story on National Public Radio caught my attention. A retired scientist who also happens to be a life-long cyclist noticed he and his friends didn’t seem to be aging the same way their non-cyclist peers were. Not in the …