London to Cardiff

On Tuesday 3rd August at 7pm listen to our interview with Alexis, Elizabeth, Lily and Joanne who are running from London to Cardiff in aid of Sport Relief. Their challenge involves 7 marathons in 7 days.

You can support them and donate at this address: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/londontocardiff

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Story Time - Coach Barry Peel

One thing that we really encourage coaches to do is share some of their experiences with their players - tell stories. It helps the players connect with you on a personal level and often creates a strong bond because they see how much you care about them in opening up and getting real with them.

Coach Barry Peel of Parkway High School in Rockford, OH:

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Cycling and Comfort: When Does It Hurt?

Small confession: For the past couple of days, I have been using my road bike for transportation. Not out of choice, but out of necessity - I can't spend more than 2 minutes on any of my upright or semi-upright bicycles right now without pain.

In my excitement about Marianne's conversion, I took her on her longest ride yet as a fixed gear - 28 miles. For the first 20 miles, everything was fine. The bike's geometry has never been the most comfortable, but as a fixed gear it felt better than ever and I was pedaling happily. But then, with just 8 miles to go, I suddenly became aware of a rapidly growing discomfort - not just in one area, but in several: in my shoulders, arms, back, pelvis, joints - pain seemed to be everywhere and it attacked me all at once. By the time I got home, I felt as if I had been run over by a train. I took some Ibuprofen and expected it would go away in the morning. But when I tried to ride my vintage Raleigh the next day, I felt the same pain immediately and barely managed to cycle to my destination a mere mile from home.

Mysteriously, I can still ride my roadbike with zero of the pain I experience on the upright bikes. Somehow being in the drop-bar position on the comfortable Rivendell does not activate any of the same discomfort. So, I am now in the ironic situation where I can go for 35 mile rides on a roadbike, but can't cycle for even a couple of miles on any of my city bicycles. Argh!

My working hypothesis of what happened is that while riding Marianne, my legs grew tired of the fixed gear pedaling, and without realising it I began to put more stress on my arms, hands, butt, and everything else. And because the mixte is semi-upright, this damaged some joints in a way that the pain only shows up in the upright position, but not in a leaned-over position. Does that make any sense as a possibility?

But this particular situation aside, I have been thinking a lot lately about comfort, and, more specifically, about when it is appropriate to declare that a bicycle is "comfortable".  Had I limited my rides on Marianne to 20 miles at a time or less, I would have thought she was perfectly comfortable. I could have ridden her this way for years, thinking that I had a comfortable bike - but I would have been wrong. And that is why it is so difficult to determine a bicycle's comfort based on the sort of test rides you take at the bike shop, or even short rides on your own. Bicycle A might feel better than Bicycle B after a short spin, but how will they compare after mile 20? mile 50? mile 100? You just do not know, until you actually ride the bicycle for that distance.

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Criticism of Biediger v. Quinnipiac University and the Rejection of Competitive Cheer as a Title IX Eligible Sport

Over on Saving Sports, the official blog of the College Sports Council which advocates reform of Title IX, Eric McErlain argues on behalf of competitive cheer qualifying as a Title IX sport. He also takes issue with U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill's recent opinion in Biediger v. Quinnipiac University, where Quinnipiac was ordered to keep it's women's volleyball team in order to comply with Title IX. McErlain contends that the lack of international and professional competitions for competitive cheer should not impair competitive cheer's chances for Title IX recognition since similar opportunties for softball are on the decline as well (and Eric cites Holly Vietzke post on our blog titled Is Softball on Life Support?). Eric also notes:

Despite Judge Underhill's ruling, female student athletes have already decided on their own that competitive cheer is a sport. As of the 2008-09 academic year, competitive cheer was more popular with female student athletes in the nation's high schools than golf, field hockey, lacrosse or gymnastics. Overall, it is the ninth most popular sport for female high school students.

For an additional reading critical of Judge Underhill's analysis, see this column from Gregg Easterbrook on ESPN.com.

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Lång cykel

Lc 2x20kg: 5
Lc 2x24kg: 5,10,24,21,15

Oa lc 28kg: 5/5

Snatch 12kg (with gloves): 10min multiswitch

Det var med fasa som jag gjorde mina första längre lc-set på ett tag. Rädslan var befogad, det är ju ordentligt ansträngande. Kändes som att det finns en speciell "lång cykel-kondition" och att den bara kan tränas med lång cykel.

Snatch tycker jag också är väldigt konditionskrävande men på ett annat vis - mer aerobt?

Styrka och tekniken i lång cykel kändes ok för att vara mig. Det avslutande snatch-setet var nära att jag gav upp.


Okc.s logo är fräck.

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The Truth About Immigration

There's a lot of talk, talk, talk about blocking immigration and there has been since the beginning of the nation state, and probably the city-state and all the way back to ancient tribalism. The facts are these: people who want to get in WILL ALWAYS find a way to get in. The notion of blocking human beings from infiltrating through the almost infinite borders of a country the size of the US is insane, since it has been demonstrated impossible in a country the size of Italy (which can fit inside of about half of Texas.) People in first-world societies do not even want to imagine working the kinds of jobs that legal and illegal immigrants work. The US economy, along with the European ones, would collapse completely without this hypocritical game of complain and hire, complain and hire. Nothing is ever actually done about immigration "problems" and never will be, since the corporations you are talking about RUN THE PLANET and they need those workers, while the politicians need the racist subplot to get you to vote for them!! The whole thing is a political game and you are being manipulated by the pols for votes. Nothing else.
FRANK FRANCO, a Facebooker on immigration

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