During my year-long hiatus from this blog, many things have happened in my life - as they do for everyone. I had a great experience as an intern with the Portland Timbers, I met a great mentor and friend, I graduated college, traveled and moved across the country and started a job with a team in North Carolina; all while spending as much time as possible with the most wonderful girl I have ever had the pleasure of sharing a room with.
Through all of these experiences, I have learned a great deal that has led to the refinement of my career goals. Without going into detail here, with some luck I will be able to continue my career in the sports performance field, optimizing physical abilities of athletes and allowing them to perform at their peak. I have had several mentors and friends that have helped me define this path and to them I am extraordinarily grateful. Curiously, one particular similarity that these friends and colleagues all share is their love and dedication to cycling.
Being a soccer player for so many years meant there was never a lot of time available for the pursuit of other athletic endeavors, so I had never really considered cycling as a potential sport in which to compete. As college progressed one of my professors (a former college athlete) professed his commitment to cycling and after I underwent some biometric testing in class, including a VO2max test, he suggested that I try the sport. Still a year away from exhausting my NCAA eligibility, I considered it not necessarily something I would need to concern myself with in the immediate future and focused instead on my upcoming season.
After my senior season and my decision to follow a different career path, I started seriously considering other athletic areas in which to compete. I had considered Olympic Weightlifting, since I had been doing some form or another of the sport since I was 12. I absolutely love the athleticism and power involved, but it somehow did not seem to mesh well with my physical profile.
I then had the fortune of meeting a friend who was a former soccer player turned cyclist who reintroduced me to cycling. He took time to take me around to bike shops and show me what was what. He talked to me about bike fit, saddle hardness, and where to first invest money on a bike. All of a sudden I started talking to everyone about cycling and finding out as much as possible about this new world.
After months and months of research and after moving to North Carolina, I made the leap and with the help of my family, bought my bike. It is a Specialized Tarmac Sport mid-compact with Shimano 105 components and I love every inch of that machine.
I have ridden close to 1500 miles now on the bike and I have fallen in love with the sport. It isn't just the freedom, the speed, or the physical pain that I love about riding my bike. For me, cycling is a complete and direct physical representation of sports science. Every aspect of riding (excluding perhaps psychology, but I believe I could make a case for it) can be quantified, analyzed, and modified. From the obvious and large aspects like VO2max and wattage, to the more subtle but no less important areas such as posterior chain deficiencies that prevent maximal aerodynamics and power output. Global physical concepts such as power:weight ratios that determine climbing efficiencies or local concepts like ankle flexion for optimal power transfer to the crank are integral to the sport. People track all sorts of data for their rides: GPS, cadence, power output, blood lactate, heart rate. The amount of data you can collect far outweighs the amount of data that can be processed efficiently. But every number holds at least part of the answer to the best kept secret in all of athletics: how to improve.
I think about these concepts while I'm riding. I think about the integration of body and machine. I think about optimizing my current performance. I think about the data I have collected and what it means. I think about ergogenic aids I could design to improve training techniques. I think about the latest academic research and the potential applications. I think about how much I love sports science...and I think I want to think about this for the rest of my life ;)
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