2. Eat 1 handful per day of the following snack mix: 1 part pumpkin seeds, 1 part Brazil nuts, 1 part sesame seeds, 1 part raisins, dried cranberries or dried blueberries.

3. Include the following meal in your diet 2 times a week: roasted or sautéed asparagus (3-5 pieces), sautéed with tofu, sea salt, pepper, turmeric to taste, lemon juice and slivered almonds. Include, if available, 1-2 pinches of parsley, thyme, oregano and/or basil. This is a very easy and quick meal to make and pack for lunches or eat as a side for dinner.

4. Other good produce to include regularly in salads and as lunch or dinner sides, and to purchase frequently when at the grocery store: string beans or green beans, kale, mustard greens, kelp, Brussels sprouts, olives, green peas, fennel and celery.

5. Since the transport system responsible for iron uptake is highly dependent on the mineral magnesium as a co-factor, try to include a magnesium mineral supplement in your diet, such as Natural Vitality’s Natural Calm^®. Seventy-five percent of endurance athletes are deficient in this crucial mineral. This product is specifically designed to achieve optimum magnesium ratios to eliminate cramping and enhance running performance.

6. Wait at least 1 hour after a meal before drinking any black or green tea.

7. Include a few sprinkles of cinnamon with all breakfast foods, yogurts, cereals, etc.

8. If you consume oatmeal, consider substituting with cooked quinoa, which is higher in iron.

9. If possible, eat a serving of red meat (the size of a deck of cards) 1-2 times a week.

10. Chopped fresh dill weed or dill spice and a dark red salmon (4-6 oz.) go very well together and would be another excellent dinner choice. You can serve with roasted asparagus or any of the other vegetables listed above. Crimini mushrooms also are high in iron and would be excellent sautéed with the salmon.

As an added endurance booster try Natural Vitality’s NutraRev! ^® combined with their Energy28™ product 45 minutes before training or a race. Besides the antioxidant protection, I found that the combination of both helps utilize carbohydrates efficiently to get the most out of any calorie-dense nutrition that I would take during training and during a race. I recently took this combination before the start of the Nevis Triathlon, and it really helped boost and sustain my energy level.

Ben Greenfield, M.A. Sports Science and Exercise Physiology — Mr. Greenfield was voted the 2008 Personal Trainer of the Year by the National Strength and Conditioning Association and is the author of “Shape21 — The Complete 21 Day Lean Body Manual” along with several other books, including “Top 12 Resistance Training Routines for Triathletes,” “Run With No Pain” and “100 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism.” If you found these tips helpful, then be sure to sign up for the free newsletter at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, where you’ll get even more free videos, audios and articles to boost your fitness success.

Behold the 21st century diet, which to a large extent consists of sugar, grains, dairy, beans/legumes and artificial sweeteners, soda, corn syrup and processed meat. We are obviously and blatantly no longer eating and living as our ancestors did in that natural environment.

Thanks to researchers like Loren Cordain, Ph.D., of Colorado State University and author of the book The Paleo Diet, and now Robb Wolf, we have come to understand that our bodies have not kept up with modern diets, and we are getting fatter, weaker and sicker as a result.

What would our ancestors eat? Wolf says they’d eat whatever they could kill, dig out of the ground or rip from a shrub or tree. They would not eat the staples of our 21^st century diet.

Wolf, an athlete and former research biochemist and review editor for the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, is co-founder of the nutrition and athletic training journal The Performance Menu. He is also co-owner of Paleo Brands Inc., a paleo food company selling meals and snacks featuring grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish and all organic ingredients.

Wolf is also an intense researcher who is passionate about the power of ancestral diets to help athletes and fitness enthusiasts feel, look and perform better. Studies of indigenous populations worldwide, from the South Pacific to the Arctic, confirm that when people live on ancestral diets, they live long and surprisingly healthy lives free of the chronic diseases that plague Western society. Although, as Wolf humorously notes, “our ancestors lived a rough-and-tumble existence that left their skeletons looking like equal parts Olympic athlete and rodeo clown.”

As an athlete, Wolf is a former California State Powerlifting Champion (565 lb. squat, 345 lb. bench, 565 lb. deadlift) and a 6-0 amateur kickboxer. In his own words, Wolf says, “Athletically, I’ve competed in powerlifting and Thai boxing. I’ve dabbled in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and am working to finally get my blue belt. Since late 2001, I’ve been involved with CrossFit in some capacity or another, and for the past six years I’ve been co-owner of NorCal Strength & Conditioning in the hot box of Chico, CA, named one of Men’s Health magazine’s “top 30 gyms in America.”

Wolf is an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. In addition, he is a USAW Olympic Weightlifting coach, and a certified CrossFit Coach, the highest level of CrossFit training certification, possessed only by a handful of strength and conditioning coaches throughout the world.

He coaches athletes at the highest levels of competition, and consults with Olympians and world champions in MMA (mixed martial arts), motocross, rowing and triathlon. He’s provided seminars in nutrition and strength and conditioning to various military organizations, including the Canadian Light Infantry and the United States Marine Corps.

Wolf received his scientific training at California State University Chico, where he earned a B.S. degree in biochemistry. From there, Wolf worked as a research biochemist for five years, which included metabolism research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as well as Paleolithic diet research with Dr. Cordain.

Click any image above to see a larger version.

The Paleo Solution covers how metabolic derangement comes about vis-a-vis our standard Western diet and illustrates the chemical mechanisms by which the Paleo diet works. Grains, carbs, vegetarian diets, hormones, fats and the digestive process are all clearly explained, and false diet information is dispelled. Wolf’s book also describes how to optimally exercise (run fast for short periods of time; lift heavy weights; and take walks, both slow and fast) how to understand your own blood work; what a daily menu should look like and how to make a Paleo eating plan that works for you.

In addition to dietary changes, Wolf also delves into the importance of vitamin and mineral supplementation with a focus on the quality and duration of sleep, along with a proper fitness routine.

Over the years, depleted soils have lost a great deal of their mineral and nutrient value. Modern farming practices have leeched the minerals out of the ground, and as a consequence, our foods are not nearly as mineral rich and nutritious as they were in the past.

One such depleted mineral is magnesium. Wolf explains that “magnesium is a vital mineral that unfortunately takes a backseat to its cousin, calcium. It seems that everyone knows about calcium and yet, it is important to understand that magnesium works synergistically with calcium in the body to enable the proper absorption of calcium. Magnesium is one of those universally needed supplements that helps with sleep, athletic recovery, muscle tone and muscle tissue regeneration.”

Wolf adds, “It is a rare athlete or fitness enthusiast that has not experienced sleep disruption from training or overtraining, and if you do not sleep well, you will completely block the fat loss process and hamper training recovery. That’s why I feel comfortable recommending Natural Vitality’s magnesium product Natural Calm^® to most of my clients.”

“One of my clients, a prolific author and Lightweight Mixed Martial Arts Champion, uses Natural Calm,” says Wolf. “This individual, who works at a nonstop, breakneck pace, tells me that the product helps him relax so that he can mellow, unwind and recover from his frantic schedule of writing and training.”

Wolf adds, “Among several other benefits, this product delivers better sleep quality, which is a good return on investment when it comes to managing your health and fitness.”

For more information, visit the NorCal Strength & Conditioning web site at http://norcalsc.com.

Rebecca has chosen the road less traveled: the triathlon, the multi-sport event that involves completing three continuous endurance events one after another, each with its own unique set of rules and regulations. Athletes swim, cycle (without drafting another cyclist) and run in immediate succession over a variety of distances for the fastest overall course completion time, including timed “transitions” in which they change gear between each event.

Rebecca has competed in two sprint distance triathlons, an Olympic distance triathlon, four Half Ironman triathlons and numerous half marathons and full marathons with a goal in mind of competing in a full Ironman triathlon race by 2012.

At 6:40 am this morning she plunged headlong into the cold water of the Pacific off the California coast to swim 1.2 miles at the start of a five-hour-plus ordeal that kicked off “The California 70.3,” her fifth career Half Ironman event.

The promotional brochure for this event reads like a tourist attraction: “Athletes will enjoy the calm waters of the 1.2-mile swim course in Oceanside Harbor, the tough one-loop, 56-mile bike course that includes the coastal beauty of San Clemente State Park and the challenging inland hills of Camp Pendleton and a 13.1-mile run through the scenic coastal neighborhoods of Oceanside.” Ahh, sounds like a veritable paradise vacation spa retreat—not!

What does it take to keep yourself from smashing an alarm clock against a wall or burying it under a pillow every morning as it goes off at 5:30 am to signal the start of another day of training, with a run or bike or swim for an hour or more, to be repeated once again at the end of the day? What does it take to keep going when you feel burned out, tired or lacking motivation to train?

Rebecca feels, “It’s really the friends I have made, my club mates from The Pasadena Tri Club, and the thought of being outside training with a group. This is what I really enjoy and helping myself and others reach their goals and continue to challenge ourselves. That’s what gets me up and going in the morning.

“I like the challenge of training for a triathlon, the unknowns of race day and crossing the finish line knowing you gave everything you had and discovering a lot about yourself in the process.”

Before competing in triathlons, Rebecca concentrated on running only, gradually building up to a half marathon and then a full marathon distance. But it wasn’t smooth sailing all the way. Her first full marathon turned out to be a nightmare. At about the halfway point a recent IT band injury came back and caused so much pain in her knee that she walked the rest of the marathon and finished it in seven and a half hours.

By trial and error she built herself back up and learned and listened to what her body could take along the way. She readied herself for a comeback at the full marathon distance in 2008. As the day of the race approached, brushfires broke out in Los Angeles, creating very poor air quality along the race route – eventually forcing organizers to cancel the race on the morning of the event.

Undaunted, Rebecca continued to train and finally got her shot at a full marathon attempt once again. Rebecca said: “I was finally able to complete my first injury-free marathon in four and a half hours, a big improvement over my first one. And then I started to dabble in the shorter-distance triathlons just to see how I would do. After doing two sprint triathlons on my mountain bike and with coaxing from a friend who was in a triathlon club, I decided to get a road bike and really go for it. With the help and direction of Pasadena Tri Club members, I was able to amp up my fitness and experience on the bike through regular training rides and advice from more experienced riders. I also started to ‘learn’ how to swim. Having no swim background, this has been the most difficult discipline, but I continue to work at it.”

Now Rebecca trains five to six days a week, with an hour to an hour and a half in the mornings and another session in the evenings. She mixes swimming, biking and running, both distance and speed work on a track along with longer rides and runs on the weekends. This has brought her speed and endurance up to a point where she is usually in the top 10–20 competitors in her age group. In fact, she recently ran a personal-best half marathon in 1:38, which is close to a very respectable 3:30 marathon pace.

In the recent “California 70.3 – Half Ironman” event that Rebecca competed in, she recounts, “Athletes had to swim out to the start, which gave me a chance to get my face in the water a few times and get over the cold and tightness in my chest, so when we did start the swim I was not panicked. The swim started and I took a few moments to find my way in the mess; as I neared the turnaround, the water was getting rough and choppy. I made the turn and I actually felt good, and thought to myself that I’ll have a faster swim than last year. I got out of the water not feeling like absolute death. I thought, this is good, I must have had a good swim time–on to the bike I go!

“I had two packs of Energy 28 in both of my water bottles on the bike mixed with my powdered calorie mixtures. This combination of nutrition treated me fantastically and carried me through to have a great run off the bike. I also took my liquid vitamins daily (Organic Life Vitamins) leading up to this event and used the Natural Calm^® Sports Bath and Natural Calm for recovery after hard training days.

“I made a smooth transition from swim to bike. I aimed to take it easy on the first half of the course, knowing the second half was harder. At about the time I turned into the backside of Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marine Corp base that the bike course went through, the headwinds started up. Ugh! Going up that first hill at 5 mph was no pleasure ride, but I was happy about the downhill coming up. I was aiming for a 2:45 time on the bike, but at the final right turn back to the harbor with six miles left I knew I wouldn’t make that time. Oh well, at this point my body was feeling tight from the bike, but still good. As it turned out, my bike time was 2:52:25 (two seconds slower than last year).

“Into the bike-to-run transition, I racked the bike and slipped on my running shoes, grabbed my hat and watch, and out I went.

“Needing to pee for the last 10 miles of the bike portion of the event didn’t help. I finally saw my chance in the run, as I spotted the first Porta-Potty available, and miraculously there was no line. I ran in and it took me at least two minutes. Oh well, back out I went. For the first two miles my shins were burning and on fire. Lactic acid hadn’t had a chance to clear out. I told my shins to put up and shut up because we were going to do this run, and they did. After a few miles my legs loosened up and I got into my rhythm. The great thing about this two-loop course is that you can see all the other runners. I saw friends and club members a couple of times. Each time we yelled encouragements back and forth. For the first few miles I aimed at around an eight-minute mile pace but, feeling good, I picked it up. On the second loop I picked it up even more, and my goal was to hold on to this faster pace until the end, which I did. I finished strong but felt spent, and at the same time it felt good. My run time was 1:43:20.

“At the end of the day I was happy. I managed to put it all together in one smart race package, and I think it was a successful early-season event, a good stepping stone to a full Ironman.”

With her 11^th place age-group finish and personal-record improvement of two minutes, we agree.

The field was incredibly stacked, with two World Champions—2009 champion Mbulaeni Mulaudzi of South Africa and 2007 champion Alfred Yego of Kenya—and the Commonwealth Champion, Boaz Lalang, with all three having run the 800 meters in the 1:42s. Added to the pack were Olympic 1,500-meter champion Asbel Kiprop and the World Junior champion David Mutua.

Sammy Tangui ran like a rabbit to set the pace for the first 400 meters in 49.83, while Robinson was literally running in last place at the back of the pack due to a slow start, clocking in at 52 seconds flat. When Tangui dropped out after the first lap, Mutua, the young World Junior Champion, took control at the front and opened up a gap in the field, leading the rest of the way until KD, the oldest runner in the event, flew past him.

At the 550-meter mark, with 250 meters to go, KD throttled his way up from the back. At 600 meters, Mutua was at 1:17.98 and Robinson was over a second behind—still in seventh place but moving fast. Passing runners like a rocket by the middle of the last turn and in the blink of an eye, KD was in second place, chasing Mutua down. With a little over 100 meters to go, KD flew by Mutua and just kept on going. KD’s lead increased down the final straight as he destroyed the field comprising some of the greatest 800-meter runners in the world.

“Nobody could have expected I’d win here,” KD said. “I felt good, everything went well and the oldest man in the race won.”

At 34 years of age, the married father of two crossed the finish line in 1:45.09 to beat Kiprop, the defending Olympic 1,500 champion; Mulaudzi, the defending World Champion in the 800; and Yego, who took silver in the 800 in the last World Championships.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From this event KD earned the title of USA Track & Field’s Athlete of the Week and surpassed the World and Olympic qualifying standard of 1:45.40.

“I only had two races (this year before Rome), but I had won both. I knew I was in better shape than what I had run,” said KD. “I knew I could run faster. That is one thing I wanted to get done—to validate the training and the nutrition program that I am on. My body was able to respond, and mentally I was able to do what I needed to do, and everything lined up. And I’m happy it did.

“I want to thank my long-time coach Dr. Frank Little, and I want to thank Natural Vitality Sports for the nutrition products that are helping me get to the top.

“For me at this point, my next concern is the (USATF) Nationals (June 23–26 in Eugene, qualifier for the World Championships in Korea). … It’s great to run fast times, and I want to run them, but the main thing is Nationals and running my fastest when it counts the most.”

Basically, there are several mechanisms that your body relies on to keep your weight-o-meter at one constant level. While these survival mechanisms may have helped our ancestors rely on stored fat in times of cold, famine and trekking, it really doesn’t help us at all in our technology-assisted lifestyles, where food is prevalent and moving about is not very necessary. These fat-preserving mechanisms include the following:

1.    Studies have shown that “ex-fat” people have a higher tendency to crave high-fat and high-sugar foods. Since fat serves as a thermoregulator and a shock absorber, our natural instinct is to try and keep a bit on, so the appetite naturally screams at you to gain that adipose tissue back once it’s gotten used to having it there. As I mentioned, we don’t actually need the fat, but the natural desire is present.

2.    Once the body has lost fat, your brain is under the impression that food is scarce and starvation is a threat. To conserve your resources, the body naturally decreases your metabolism so that you burn fewer calories during the day. As your metabolic rate decreases, it becomes tougher to burn calories, and more exercise becomes necessary.

3.    An enzyme called lipoprotein lipase actually increases in individuals who have lost weight. This enzyme promotes storage of adipose tissue, especially in the abdominal regions. This means that if you consume any extra calories, they are that much more likely to be stored as fat rather than burned as energy.

4.    Your body naturally burns a mixture of carbohydrates and fats. While this mixture varies from person to person, an individual who has lost weight tends to not burn as many fatty acids as part of the mixture. Again, this is just a natural mechanism to retain storage fat, but it can be quite inconvenient when you’re trying to keep the pounds at bay.

Combine these mechanisms with the fact that your body never actually gets rid of fat cells once they’re there. The cells simply decrease in size, waiting for a chance to gobble up any extra calories you might throw their way so that they can grow back into well-fed fat cells. It really is true— individuals who used to be fat actually face a constant uphill battle once they’ve lost weight!

So how do you avoid the bulging stomach, along with the risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis and high cholesterol that accompany an expanding waistline.

First, stick to the diet that got you lean, which should include addressing nutritional deficiencies through the use of superfoods, vitamins, micronutrients and minerals like magnesium, as contained in Natural Vitality’s variety of products including Natural Calm^®. According to Carolyn Dean, MD, ND: “Magnesium and the B-complex vitamins are excellent examples of energy nutrients, because they activate enzymes that control digestion, absorption and the utilization of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. Magnesium helps the body efficiently digest, absorb and utilize proteins, fats and carbohydrates.”

Secondly, constantly keep your metabolism guessing by frequently changing activities.

How do you keep your body guessing? From week to week, change up your exercise routine, try new sports, alter your intensity, don’t work out at the same time of day and consistently attempt to throw a metabolic curveball at your body. Sure, it wants to be fat— but you can always stay one step ahead!

Ben Greenfield, M.A. Sports Science and Exercise Physiology—Mr. Greenfield was voted the 2008 Personal Trainer of the Year by the National Strength and Conditioning Association and is the author of “Shape21—The Complete 21 Day Lean Body Manual” along with several other books including “Top 12 Resistance Training Routines for Triathletes,” “Run With No Pain,” and “100 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism.” If you found these tips helpful, then be sure to sign up for the free newsletter from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, where you’ll get even more free videos, audios and articles to boost your fitness success.

Filbert Bayi echoed Shadle’s sentiments after his gold medal win in this event in the 1980 Olympics when he said, “Because it’s fun. It is fun to run as fast as one can until you are dead tired.” Kip Keino, one of the greatest distance runners of all time, said, “The steeplechase is a race for animals.” Another runner claimed that although the hurdles start out at 3 feet high, they progressively look and feel higher and higher with each lap of the track.

The steeplechase is one of the more unconventional events you will see in a track-and-field competition, and yet there is something more natural, more primal about it compared to other events that almost eludes description.

Perhaps it harkens back to the days when as hunters and gatherers we had to cover a lot of ground, chasing down game for survival or being chased down as some predator’s supper—jumping over logs and streams and avoiding a variety of natural forest obstacles as we grappled with day-to-day existence.

The modern-day event has been standardized to a distance of 3,000 meters, run on a track with four barriers spaced around the track and a fifth water jump barrier at the top of the second turn, for a total of 28 barriers and seven water jumps covering the entire race. Each of the barriers is 36 inches high for men and 30 inches high for women. The water jumps also have a 3-foot-high barrier that leads into the jump and a 12-foot-long pit filled with water. The pit slopes down toward the barrier to a maximum depth of 2 feet and 3-1/2 inches nearest the barrier and becomes progressively shallower until it is even with the track. Runners who jump over the barrier the farthest are rewarded by hitting the shallower water, which allows them to recover their stride and speed that much more quickly. In fact, steeplechase barriers do not fall over if hit like in the shorter-sprint hurdling events, and some steeplechase runners actually step on top of them as part of their racing technique.

The 3,000-meter steeplechase for women made its first major appearance at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, Finland. And it was only in 2008 that the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase finally appeared for the first time on Olympic tracks in Beijing, China.

Entering the steeplechase fray is Shadle, who has been winning races since high school, garnering several state championships along with the 2001 Gatorade Nebraska Girls Track & Field Athlete of the Year.

Shadle reached a whole new level of running and training in college, where she competed for the University of Nebraska Huskers from 2001 to 2005. During this time she earned cross-country all-region honors in 2003 and returned for her final season in 2004 to cocaptain the team and earn her first All-Big 12 honor. In track and field, Shadle swept the 2005 indoor mile run and outdoor 1,500-meter NCAA Championship titles, which culminated in a professional contract with Reebok.

Competing as a pro for Reebok from 2005 to 2008 ended in a disappointing 2008 Olympic Trials. After the Olympic Trials, Shadle took a year off to recharge and fix her mindset. Today, she is back to having fun, running and racing with a new determination to come back stronger than ever in the steeplechase event. She told us, “In this event, running ability is really secondary to efficient form over the barriers. Emotional strength and composure is also vital, and that is something I just didn’t have a few years ago.”

It has been estimated that runners lose more than 19 seconds over the course of the race as each barrier eats up between 0.4 and 0.7 seconds to clear.

Click any image above to see a larger version.

“You have to recover your stride as fast as possible after every jump and not get rattled by the barriers or the other runners,” said Shadle. “You have to constantly calculate your speed, timing, distance and the position of the other runners. One misstep and you lose momentum and time and possibly the entire race.

“I am training hard every day and focusing on what I can do today so as to achieve my goals tomorrow. And the Natural Vitality products are a part of the equation.

“I am all about natural nutrition versus synthetic crap. With Organic Life Vitamins^®, which I take before workouts, I know that I am getting organic fruits and veggies in a liquid form, which helps my body absorb the nutrients directly, and I just feel healthier overall as a result.

“After doing hard sessions like 8 intervals x 800 meters at race speed, combined with core training, jump drills and stretches, I take Natural Calm^® Plus Calcium to get a head start on recovery. The better and faster my recovery, the more benefit I gain from my workouts. My legs never cramp up, and I attribute this to the supplements that I take. I also use Energy28™ after my workouts because normally I feel a certain amount of fatigue after a hard training day and I tend to want to reach for coffee to get a needed energy boost. I know coffee is not an ideal drink for me, and it tends to upset my stomach. With Energy 28 I can get my boost naturally without any stomach upset.

“Natural Calm Sports Bath™ is another product I use, especially after my weekend long runs. I took a long run on Sunday and immediately took a bath after the run using this product, and this helped loosen my muscles and clear out free radicals, which allowed me to function better throughout the day. I had previously tried using Epsom Salt baths, and it just wasn’t the same.

“While I am busy tearing my body down through workouts, I need nutrition that helps me repair and recover so I can get more out of my training and train even harder. All of these products separately and combined help me accomplish this.”

It takes a great deal of dedication, determination, hard work, balanced sacrifice, confidence, steely composure and boundless courage to compete at the highest levels of this sport while still keeping it fun. Shadle has shown plenty of all of these attributes, as she recently ran a personal record of 10:48 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, making her performance an Olympic-level standard in the event and qualifying her for the National Track & Field Championships this summer.

Shadle is also staying plenty busy as a graduate student at the University of Missouri, where she is going for her PhD in sports psychology under her mentor Dr. Rick McGuire, who has been the head track-and-field coach at the university for 25 years and who founded and still leads the sports psychology program for USA Track & Field. Shadle loves giving back to the sport and acts as a mentor and role model to some of the young athletes at the university who are coming up through the ranks. Needless to say, they are very blessed to have her around.

Racing along single track mountain bike trails with rocks, ruts and roots with gorgeous scenery all around, runners covered some of the best trail running in all of West Virginia. Final placing was determined by the number of laps completed by each solo runner and team. Racing started at 7am, and the runner’s last lap had to be started before 7 pm with each lap stretched out across approximately 6.5 miles and mandatory athlete check in on each loop.

“Trail running satisfies my need to connect with nature,” Mosi told us. “When I hit technology overload from computers, cell phones and other electronic gadgets, there is nothing like hitting the trails to clear your mind and get recharged.”

“I ran 65 miles in 11 hours and 30 minutes. I took a shot of Energy 28™ at the beginning of the race and another shot on loop 9 at about 58 miles and that helped see me through to a 1^st place finish seven miles later. For that I am extremely stoked.”

“Our motto is, ‘The Mountain Changes Everything,’” said race director Jim Birrell of Medalist Sports, the race producer. “The key elements are elevation and altitude.”

The first 12 miles up Cottonwood Pass are on dirt, adding to the challenge on the riders’ thin road tires.

“I don’t think we’ve ever taken riders on such a long journey on dirt,” Birrell said.

The cyclists will ascend 2,740 feet over nearly 14 miles to reach Cottonwood Pass, the highest point during the weeklong race. After a tough climb and fast descent comes another grueling climb up Independence Pass, a road that’s narrow and steep with a 6.5 percent gradient and numerous switchbacks.

Organizers had to seek permission from the International Cycling Union to route their race over the twin peaks.

“I don’t know if you can pick another stage anywhere in the world that has the physical and mental demands of the Queen’s Stage,” said Shawn Hunter, race CEO and co-chairman.

Despite grueling ascents and fast descents, Birrell said safety was paramount in designing the arduous route.

Last month, 26-year-old Belgian Wouter Weylandt died when he crashed after clipping a wall during a decent in the Giro d’Italia.

Birrell asked cycling teams and cycling federations about the feasibility of the grueling second stage and then checked with the Colorado Department of Transportation and other agencies to ensure road conditions would be good.

The race through Colorado’s front range and the picturesque Rocky Mountains begins with an ultra-fast prologue in which riders will descend from the Garden of the Gods at 50-plus mph and into Colorado Springs. The race ends in downtown Denver on Aug. 28.

Click here to read the rest of this article at HuffingtonPost.com.

What you might not have realized when you saw her is that this Redmond resident is a force to be reckoned with in competition.

Croft has just come off a big win in the Rock-and-Roll Marathon in Seattle, but to her the race was just fuel to propel her toward her big goal for the year—winning her age group at the Kona, Hawaii, Iron Man Triathlon this October.

Croft said she feels strong and believes she has a good shot at the Iron Man. The Rock-and-Roll win is the latest in a number of good races, including the Seattle Half, which she also won, that she’s had this past year.

“This has definitely boosted my confidence,” Croft said.

The 36-year-old Croft, who is originally from Nova Scotia and moved here a few years ago to close the distance between herself and her partner, Dustin Grosse, says she loves the Northwest climate for training, even if the rain does interfere with bike rides sometimes.

“It’s a lot like Nova Scotia in climate,” she said.

Croft began racing in 2002 in her native Nova Scotia, and was named Rookie of the Year and best female triathlete that year. She competed in her first Iron Man in Wisconsin in 2004 and since has competed in six full Iron Man competitions and a few full marathons.

Click here to read the rest of this article at Redmond.Patch.com.

According to the blog Cyclists in the City (that’s “The City,” as in London’s version of Wall Street), the latest figures from London’s transportation department show a huge boom in the number of two-wheeled commuters. This runs counter to the constant hectoring of people like high-profile journalist Jeremy Clarkson, who has made sport of ridiculing people who don’t burn fossil fuels to get where they’re going, and who recently referred to cycling in The Sunday Times of London (paywall) as “a frontline propaganda weapon in the war on capitalism.”

But an article from the same edition of the Times (excerpted on the Cyclists in the City blog) paints a picture that explains why anti-cycling polemecists like Clarkson are feeling uncomfortable:

Cyclists have for the first time outnumbered motorists on some of the country’s busiest commuter routes during the rush hour.

On Cheapside, a street in the City of London, cycles make up more than 50 percent of the commuter traffic, according to official data, and account for up to 42 percent of traffic on Southwark Bridge across the Thames. In one Bristol suburb more than one in four people cycle to work. …

The surge in the number of people switching to two wheels is likely to be even greater than the new figures suggest.

Most of the data was compiled before July 2010, when 5,500 rental bikes were introduced and the first two “cycle-superhighways”—distinctive blue cycle lanes—were opened by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London.

Cyclists in the City’s author goes on to say this:

You see, Mr Clarkson. Those cyclists aren’t a front line against capitalism. If anything, as your own newspaper asserts, those cyclists are hurrying to jobs in the City of London and Canary Wharf. Far from being the warriors against banking that Mr Clarkson thinks they are, a sizeable chunk of London’s cyclists actually are bankers.

Another London bike blog, i bike london, emphasizes how pervasive anti-cycling sentiment is, despite the huge uptick in numbers and the demonstrably “respectable” nature of many of the people on bikes:

There’s a risk, outside of cycling circles, that we forget what a tabloid view some of our movers and shakers who run London actually have about cycling.  To them, we don’t count because we’re a bunch of bearded yoghurt-knitting harpies who don’t deserve to be taken seriously.

Click here to read the rest of this article at Grist.org.