WOW, time flies when you are doing a kazillion things at once. If I could only get to a billion, I’d almost be half sane. Oh yeah, let me finish my title – Winter Training Starts in 18 Days – now as I was saying, YIKES!

Whether it is mountain biking, road cycling, or even touring, power can be the gateway to a new experience on two wheels. You’ll be able to “hang with the faster group”, climb the hills you used to walk, or climb with speed where you used to get dropped, or just feel fresh throughout a touring ride while your companions are “suffering”.

In a previous post (Formulas Don’t Work), I bemoaned the continual use of “220-age” as the basis for CVT (Cardio Vascular Training).  In a first here at the Fanatics blog, I’ve invited the real expert to “splain” it to us – why this thing just doesn’t work.  You can also download the original white paper by Sally Edwards from her website, complete with detailed scientific references if you want to share it with others that need to know.  Here is the body of that paper:

Nothing frustrates me more than small thinking.  In fact, if I can point to one factor that has compelled me to virtually every entrepreneurial endeavor I’ve ever done (of which there are many) it would be small thinking.  Small thinking is what makes a great idea fizzle and die.  Small thinking takes opportunity and handicaps it.  Small thinking is fueled by fear and a lack of confidence.  Small thinking is expert at discovering all the reasons why something won’t work, and is blind to all the reasons something will work.  Small thinking is short term, negative, and impotent to taking a new idea to its ultimate destiny.  I say DEATH to small thinking!

Most people probably don’t know that I wasn’t sure I would be doing the Giretto again in 2010 under the Livestrong banner.  Their office was disappointingly unsupportive of us through a very difficult first year launch of our grass roots event, the Giretto d’Italia (Little Tour of Italy).  However, when my aunt, sister-in-law, and a half dozen other friends and family were diagnosed with various forms of cancer this year, that changed everything.  I needed to put my pride aside, and look to the bigger picture.

If you love Italy, hate cancer, and spend as much time as you can on 2 wheels, you should read on.  The Giretto d’Italia (The Little Tour o Italy) is in it’s second year, and enrollment begins now.  This year Cycling Fusion will recruit a minimum of 10 riders before we begin raising the money, booking the airfare, and in general letting the Giretto take over our lives for the next several months.  The Giretto d’Italia is a Livestrong grassroots fund raising event aimed at the best amateur riders in the cycling community, or those that want to be in the lead group.  If you want to find out just how good you can get if you train properly, this is your chance.  All that being said, we will have 2 separate groups of riders this year; the Hammer Heads (who will ride every day), and the Alternators (who will ride day 1, 3 & 5)  If you are an avid cyclist who isn’t quite sure you can “keep up” even with training, you may be able to handle the Alternators group.

This is Erika Smith.  She understands that if you can measure something, you can improve it.  She  built a device to prove it.  Doesn’t she look wonderfully geeky?

We Americans really like our quick fixes – fast food, miracle diet pills, get rich schemes, drive through funeral parlors, and more recently I’ve even heard about a drive through polititian in my home state of PA (Yikes!  Just when you think government couldn’t get more screwed up).  So, it’s no wonder that the MAX heart rate formula of 220 minus your age has hung around exercise junkies and fitness facilities since the flawed formula was first offered up.

So I thought that my last post was rare; a true “rant” of quasi-psychotic proportions, and would leave that genre behind. But here it is, on my very next post, I feel the need to vent yet again. This time however, it’s to a group of which I am a member – fitness facility owners & managers. The phrase “penny wise and pound foolish” immediately come to mind. Of course, the phrase cheapskate sons-of-a… well, I better be careful here, I do need to keep this a family blog.

I’d like to strap the guy down who convinced our state’s D.O.T. to use Tar and Chip, open his mouth wide, pour hot tar down it, then pour the rest over his entire naked body, and roll him in a dump truck of hot sharp gravel. Then, after throwing him to the ground, I’d borrow the nearest SUV and run over him, backing up several times to make sure I’ve got all the chips well sealed in his mangled flesh.