When athletes think about traveling to a different altitude to race, they often think about the difficulties associated with racing at a higher altitude. However, athletes who live at altitude and travel down to sea level to compete also face difficulties. While altitude can be great for improving endurance performance, it doesn’t allow an athlete to train at very high intensities (hence the idea of “live high, train low”). This lack of high intensity training is problematic since races are often won as a result of these high intensity efforts (sprint finishes, breaking away, etc.).

There’s a quote that I recently saw online which says, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Now I don’t know how they got to that exact number, but the people you surround yourself with does have a significant impact. The people you surround yourself with can be your support group, your motivators, and can even contribute new ideas for how you can further improve yourself.

Happy Halloween! In honor of one of my favorite holidays, today’s blog post covers one of the scariest topics in sport: goal setting. Now I know, I know, there are better ways to incorporate Halloween into a blog post (like how slow and steady can win the race). Instead, goal setting is the focus as it’s that time of year when athletes and coaches start to think about next season.

Just because the summer racing season is over, doesn’t mean all the fun is over. In fact, this has always been one of my favorite times of the year. Racing is over, fitness is high, and the Fall weather is keeping things cool and crisp. All of this adds up to be the perfect recipe for an adventure ride.

The adventure ride is unique in that each person will have their own interpretation. At its essence though, the adventure ride is about losing the training structure, pushing yourself, and having fun.

We’re constantly being told that stress is bad, but it’s not that simple. Stress has different forms. In the sports world, physical stress plays an important role for improving performance. Training puts stress on the body and you need this physical stress so that the body will adapt and get stronger.

When you’re just starting off, the best way to improve on the bike, is to ride the bike. As you get better and better though, what you do off the bike really starts to matter. In other words, preparing for and recovering from rides makes a world of difference. For this post, I’ll talk about some of the key things you can do.