As Lydia romped and played on the beach, her parents Gary and Kit watched over her and contemplated her future. It was 2001, the year Lance Armstrong would win the Tour for the third time, and Gary, who was an avid cyclist, wondered where the female athletic role models were for his young daughter. What if he could create an all-women cycling team and run it like the most professional men’s cycling teams of Europe? Men had an advantage in cycling for decades with well-funded teams, and he reasoned, if a female cycling team had the same resources, might they have the same success? Read more…
“You’re not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have.”
Oscar Pistorius
If you had seen nine-year old Sarah Reinertsen on her pretty blue Schwinn with a banana seat, you wouldn’t have guessed you were looking at a future Ironman record breaker. She was just learning how to keep the bike balanced while riding down the street as her father let go of the back of her bike. Two years earlier, she had her left leg amputated above the knee and now she wore a prosthetic leg that she nicknamed her “Barbie leg.” It was bad enough trying to keep her left foot on the pedal with the toe strap, but keeping the momentum going with just her right leg was frustrating. It was especially humiliating for her when she couldn’t keep up with the younger kids on a slightly sloped road and she decided she couldn’t live with that disgrace. It would be a long time before she got back on another bike. Read more…
There is so much more to Sarah’s story than I could possibly cover here so I recommend her book highly for those who really want the true detailed back story of her life. She gives you her story with its highs and lows, and an unsparing look at the adversity she went through. She had the family support to push her into athletics rather than keep her on the sidelines, and they were there to support her rigorous athletic schedule with lots of travel. But her family life was not an easy one and the upheaval at home compounded the other stresses she went through in her teen years. She had set-backs, dealt with insecurities about her body and made some youthful mistakes. In spite of that, she was an achiever.
I teasingly told Sarah that I thought she had a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She’s a petite, very feminine blonde who might look misleadingly vulnerable. But Sarah is surprisingly strong, physically fit, mentally tough and has that undying willpower to do whatever it takes. Like Buffy Summers, she also has had a good team of people around her to give her the support she needed to accomplish her goals. She is the girl that no one might have expected to become so extraordinary.
If you’ve done so much as a 5K or sprint triathlon yourself, you’ll be fascinated with her descriptions of her training and her particular take on athletic endeavors coming at it with a disability. If you need inspiration to do your very first triathlon, century ride or road race, Sarah will be your muse. For those who have had a life-changing experience that has resulted in some type of disability, I think you’ll find some encouragement with Sarah’s book.
She’s petite, quick to smile, and full of energy. In spite of a knee replacement, some arthritis issues and a recent 86th birthday, Alice keeps up a schedule that would make Jack LaLanne proud. She begins her mornings by carefully working on her knee, putting it through a little physical therapy to aid its recovery from the surgery, then she climbs stairs—a full sixteen flights before breakfast. Retirement wasn’t a state that suited Alice, so she is working full time, and saves her big workouts for the weekends. What does an octogenarian Weekend Warrior do? During the winter, she takes her mountain bike and rides it as she does laps in her apartment building’s two-story parking garage; she’s calculated it is a full ½ mile one way. Read more…
“The couple that exercises together stays together.” (The Schofield mantra)
For Jon and Leslie Schofield, their romance began on bicycles. “Our first date was a mountain bike ride,” Leslie remembers. It was on the mountain trails of Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort in Utah. The active life was part of who they were as individuals and as a couple. Mountain biking and running together was part of their courtship and something they continued to do together after they got married.
A marriage evolves and theirs was no different. Children came along and they juggled his full-time job, her part time job, and childcare responsibilities with their urge to continue a physically active life. So they divided things neatly to allow each to work out while the other watched the children. Leslie drew the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday schedule and Jon had the other half of the week. Leslie’s bike spent more time in the garage as she put in her early morning time running. Jon ran and mountain biked and then he got a road bike and immersed himself in local competitive cycling with criteriums, long endurance races and triathlons.
2010 Olympic Gold Medalist Lindsey Vonn in action during a race. photo nbcsports.msnbc.com
Cycling is Ski Training
Anyone who has ever skied can tell you it takes a great deal of coordination, strength and balance to do it well and the same is true for cycling. The legendary cyclist Greg LeMond used to spend his winter months in Minnesota on Nordic skis to stay in great shape for the Tour de France. Many other cyclists then and now have used skiing, Nordic especially, as a great cross-training sport to keep them fit over the winter. It should come as no surprise then that great skiers benefit from cycling as their cross-training sport. Read more…
A couple of weeks ago we reported on the Patagonia Adventure Race. Today the official results came in from the Patagonia Adventure Race Face Book Page: This is official
1.Hansen-Prunesco UK ~126 hrs. and 8 minutes
2.Air Europa Bimont España ~142 hrs. and 46 minutes
Gear Junkie (comprised of mostly Yoga Slackers) is the team that our girl Chelsey Gribbon was on. She did well from all accounts despite having gone through some health issues just prior to the race beginning. Just another reason she is so inspiring. Way to go Chelsey!
And by the way, Chelsey and gang are working on Yoga specifically for cyclists! Here is a little taste of what is in the works in a video of Chelsey doing some Acro-Yoga.
“I read a book about this less than a year ago. I thought, it just sounds exciting. I thought I could just read about this or I could do it… feel it.” –Lorie Hutchison
It’s probably understating it to say that Lorie Hutchison likes to have a big challenge. She is a veteran of many long-distance endurance races, including the 135-mile Badwater Marathon which goes through the blisteringly hot Death Valley. However, she’d now been there, done that, and was up for a new test of her endurance.
A New Challenge
Lorie was intrigued after she read about the Iditarod Trail Invitational, the world’s longest winter endurance race, which goes across the frozen and remote interior of Alaska The race allows only 50 racers who will complete the race on snow bikes, starting 10 days ahead of the dogsleds. Most of those snow bikers will travel the 350 mile route between Knik Lake and McGrath—a tiny handful might ride all the way to Nome, which would be 1100 miles, a feat of epic proportions. Read more…
On a bike you have so much time and you can’t carry so much stuff. Life immediately gets simple. After getting a taste of how simple and free life can be, it made me want to ditch the car altogether! By now I know that transitions are hard, and my immediate reaction to the car is normal. I know that it is a necessity at times, but this trip has made me see how amazing bikes are and how accessible they are. With the right gear and time frame, you can accomplish so much with your legs and two wheels.” (Chelsey Gribbon, July 16, 2009—after spending over a month mountain biking and putting on yoga workshops in Colorado)
She may be little, but she is pure dynamite. Photo by Ron Steinau
Chelsey Gribbon is headed to Patagonia to take part in an extreme adventure race at “the end of the world.” The Wenger Patagonia Expedition Race will pit various 4-person co-ed teams against each other as they cross bodies of water by sea kayak, ride over terrain without a trail on mountain bikes, and trek over and through the glacier-covered Darwin Mountain range. At times they will follow guanaco tracks, make their way through peat bogs and swampy forests, wade through ice-cold rivers up to their waists in some of the most remote and wild country on earth. It is Chelsey’s second international race and this race is quite different terrain from her first international adventure race in the desert and seas of Abu Dhabi.
“Does sexism exist in the bicycling world?” –Elly Blue sharing her thoughts with CycleAndStyle.com about the ways women are treated in the bicycling world.
Does sexism exist in the bicycling world? Well, what do you think? If you are a woman, how are you treated by the stereotypical guys in a bike shop? Is the bike industry meeting your needs? And now two more questions for “To Whom It May Concern:” why are there still so many professional-level bike races where the top women’s finisher gets just a tenth of her male counterpart as her winnings? Finally, how many women are in the top executive levels in any of the major bike companies? (Okay, Terry Precision is off the hook here!)
