Shootout Bike Ride Tucson, AZ 7/19/2008 – Kyle Akin takes Yellow & Curtis Gunn Puts It Down!

This mornings Shootout was a fast one thanks to Curtis Gunn pictured to the left. Curtis is a professional cyclist and just got back from the  Bend Memorial Clinic Cascade Cycling Classic stage race and was racing amongst top name cyclists Levi Leipheimer, Phil Zajicek, Tom Danielson, and Chris Horner just to name a few.

Curtis showed up this morning on his TT bike ready to put the hammer down. He is getting ready for a time trail and wanted to put some miles in on his TT bike.

From the start Curtis went to the front in his arrow position and drilled it. The 125+ riders were quickly strung out. Gord Fraser and a few others rotated through – That is if you could pull through at 25 mph to 30 mph+.

After the bridge the packed was down to about 25 riders still hanging on to the pace set by Curtis. As we started up the climb to the top of the sprint Team Rhino took over and set up the lead out for their teammate Kyle Akin. Kyle Akin took yellow followed by his teammate Richard Moore.

Coming back into town setting up for the sprint Curtis Gunn was drilling it from the front and Gord Fraser had his wheel with the pace around 33mph+. Unfortunately we got stopped by the light and I was slow to respond when the light turned green and don’t know who won the sprint. If you know who win please comment below.

No offense to the female cyclists but the CHICK-O-METER was HIGH today. In the old days, we us to gage the intensity of the Shootout by what we called the CHICK-O-METER. If there were female cyclists that made it all the way around the CHICK-O-METER was low which meant the Shootout was too easy. Lately I have heard some of the old timers like Peter Brown, Jimmy Ricatello and a few others refere to the CHICK-O-METER so I had to throw this in here. Again no offense to the ladies.

For a book of the best bike rides in Tucson, Arizona visit:

www.trisports.com/road-bike-rides.html

For the Shootout route visit:

www.roadbikerides.com/ride/view/shootout_/77 

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Building Self-Confidence On The Bike

If Yogi Berra were a cyclist, here’s what he’d say: cycling is 90% mental, and the other half is physical. Yet with enough self-confidence, our minds tend to stay out of the way, and we have the freedom to perform to our potential. The mentally fit cyclist knows how to assess, maintain, and build self-confidence to improve fun and performance on the bike.

By Marvin Zauderer

The building blocks of the mentally fit cyclist’s five core skills, by describing how managing your will to succeed can play an important role in your mental fitness and cycling performance. This month, I explore Self-Confidence, perhaps the most important element of every athlete’s mental fitness.

For the article The Mind of a Mentally Fit Pro, I asked pro cyclist Steven Cozza of Slipstream-Chipotle H3O about mental skills that have been challenging for him. He didn’t miss a beat:

“Confidence. It’s a huge thing in cycling. I was even told by some people,‘consider a career change.’ You can improve so much by believing in yourself. You can say, ‘I should be at the front of the race, I should be top 5.’ You don’t have to be cocky, but if you’re not confident, you don’t stand a chance. You’ve got to believe in yourself.”

Confidence. Some of us seem born with it. Some of us are lucky enough to grow up among family, friends, and mentors who help develop it in us. But for many of us, at least in certain aspects of our lives, it’s an ongoing challenge.

As I noted in the article on Goal-Setting, much of what we’ve learned about self-confidence in sport builds on the work of psychologist Albert Bandura of Stanford University (home of the current national champion road cycling team — defending their title this week!). Bandura defined self-efficacy as your belief in your “capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.” Roughly translated: Your belief that you can achieve your goals.

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