Highlight Weekend By Greta Niemanas

The highlight of my weekend was pinning on numbers. Let me explain.   After the London Games I was at a crossroads. The years leading up to the Games were laden with stress. They were packed with international travel, dozens of intense training camps, seemingly endless training at home, and the underlying stress of what if? What if I do all this work and don’t make the team? What if I get sick or injured and can’t compete? It felt like it was building and building and would eventually erupt like a volcano. This isn’t to mention all the same stress that an athlete puts on their family and friends. There are missed birthdays, graduations, summer barbeques and the more mundane movies with friends or nights on the town because of training. It’s tough on everyone involved. Riding and racing stopped being fun. [Read more...]

The Type of Effort Where:

By Greta Neimanas

Was that number six or seven? What set is this? I could really go or some applesauce right about now*. Uuggh, it’s time to go again. This is what ran through my head during a workout this week. It was a simple but unpleasant sprint workout that seemed to continue on for ages- 30/30s. When broken down, it was only 16 minutes of work. 16 painful, seemingly endless minutes of work, the type of effort where you count the seconds and pedal strokes until the effort is over.

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A Fresh View

By Greta Neimanas

For several reasons, I recently moved from the San Diego area to Asheville, NC. One of those reasons was simple- I missed the seasons. The weather in southern California is nice but it’s the same every single day. It gets stale and variation is an underrated aspect of life. Now, variations in the weather have their ups and downs. Last week’s four days of solid rain felt like being in the pacific-northwest and it made me wonder if I’d grossly misinterpreted the weather patterns of western North Carolina.

One of the nice things about moving to a new place is that everything is new and there is so much to learn about the area, the people and yourself. It brings new opportunities- opportunities to meet new people, try new things, tackle new challenges, go on adventures, get lost, find your way back, and maybe find yourself in the process. It helps you appreciate the little things in life that, in reality, are some of the biggest. Here are a few of the little things:

-Zippers. This probably sounds silly but in the move from California to North Carolina I lost the ability to dress myself appropriately. In California, you need a vest and arm warmers every now and again but the weather doesn’t change much throughout the day. Yesterday’s ride saw a thirty-degree temperature swing: 28°-58°. My mantra was zziiiiiiiiippp, zzzzzzzziipp the sound of my various layers zipping and unzipping to regulate my body temperature. Gideon Sundback, thank you for your invention because without it I would roast and freeze all on the same ride.

-Icicles. An upside to last week’s rain was a spattering of beautiful, random waterfalls spouting from the cliffs along the river. These waterfalls trickled water down the plants and vines along the cliffs and froze in the shadows creating hundreds of icicles. They appeared to absorb the ambient daylight and radiate it from within their core, like a string of lights. It was one of the most awesome displays of nature I’ve seen in a very long time.

- A clean bike. Rolling out in the morning on a clean, shiny bike is a wonderful feeling. It makes tired legs feel less heavy, it looks pro, whatever that means and you just feel good! It’s like wearing new shoes for the first time, nothing dramatic has changed but you feel like there’s more pep in your step- or in this case, pedal stroke.

These are some of the little things that helped give me a fresh view on life. They helped me to appreciate the little things that had previously gone unnoticed. The only ice in southern California comes in a glass of Coke and its beauty could’ve been overlooked. I’ve learned who the inventor of the zipper is and remembered the simple power of clean equipment. Thank you to the sometimes cruddy weather for bringing more variation in life and freshening my views.

What are some of the little things in your life that you may have missed? Take a look on your next ride and see what you find. As always, thanks for reading.