One of the most popular routes to ride in Marin County, California is known as the Alpine Dam Loop. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the loop, but I remember one 4th of July ride over twenty years ago clearly, as if it just happened yesterday.
Winter can be kind of rough for cyclists sometimes, at least for those who don’t have a winter sport that gets them outside. Winter can also be a good season for a little downtime, to either recover from the year’s efforts, or to take your mind off the mind-numbing chore of riding a trainer indoors. As a fan of cycling as a sport, along with its history, I am constantly seeking out new books to read, and I know that others may do the same. As such, I am pleased to present the 2019 version of A Cyclist’s Winter Reading List.
Burke “T-Bird” Swindlehurst’s Crusher in the Tushar will be joining the Life Time family of events starting in 2020, alongside notable endurance events such as the Leadville Trail 100 MTB and Emporia’s Dirty Kanza. Swindlehurst will remain at the helm as Crusher’s Event Director, but will now have the added resources and wealth of experience that the Life Time team brings.
From 2008 to 2014, Paul Basagoitia was one of the stars of the annual Red Bull Rampage, which takes place each October near Virgin, Utah. On October 16, 2015, after a devastating crash in practice, his life changed forever. HBO’s excellent new documentary Any One of Us, much of which was filmed by Basagoitia himself, tells the story of the crash and Basagoitia’s road to recovery from a severe spinal cord injury (SCI) which left him paralyzed from the waist down.
30 years ago today, shortly after 5:00 pm, I was sitting on the stoop outside the Nob Hill restaurant at which I worked in San Francisco, smoking a cigarette. The lunch rush was long over, and the dinner rush hadn’t started. It was hot; very hot that day. We called it earthquake weather. Little did we know. I was one of the lucky ones.
I have a fascination with words, and I love to debate. I can argue semantics for hours, much to the dismay of people around me at times. I’m pretty sure that’s why a friend of mine gave me a book this past summer; because I was driving her crazy with my insistence on using the right words.
What is the most frustrating thing that can happen to a cyclist? I think one of them is being forced off the bike, and in to walking. One weekend, late in the summer of 1994, I had that experience.
A gallery of my favorite images from the 2019 Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah
By nature, I am not a particularly religious person, but I do have a fascination with the Madonna del Ghisallo, who in the Catholic faith has been named the patron saint of cyclists.
Few athlete memoirs are well-written, and fewer still are written by women athletes. That The Breakaway: my story, by retired Welsh cyclist Nicole Cooke, is both means that the time it takes to read it is definitely well-spent.
