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Oak Mountain 6 hour MTB race report

Thursday (2/19) After my morning workout (run followed by a swim), we loaded up the car and my mom, her partner Alan, Sunny, Karel, and me hit the road to Pelham, Alabama. The 6 hour drive was uneventful except for the obligatory crawl through Atlanta traffic. We arrived at our Airbnb around 6:30pm (a two-story townhome around 10 minutes away from the park). With two sleeps before race start, it was nice to not feel rushed before the Saturday race.  Sunny has become a great traveler. He loves road trips and exploring new places with us. I still remember our first trip together in 2024 at Ironman Chattanooga. We had just adopted Sunny and he was so anxious, scared and reactive. He has come so far thanks to his extensive obedience training with Dog Elite Upstate. We love making memories with him.   Dinner was Chipotle (delivered while we unpacked), which has become a ritual. This race-cation tradition started in February 2022 when Karel and I made our very first trip to Oak Moun...
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Full Send: Why Belonging Is The Most Underrated Performance Tool

Last Saturday, I crossed the finish line at 6 Hours on the Ridge - a mountain bike event where the goal is simple:  complete  as many 6-mile loops as you can in 6 hours. I finished 10 laps in 5:59:57 (I squeezed in my last lap by 3 seconds), earning the overall female title and 9th place overall. It was my second 6-hour race in back-to-back weekends (picture above from 6 hours at Oak Mountain), and with Cape Epic just around the corner - 8 stages of mountain biking, roughly 430 miles, and 52,000+ feet of climbing across South Africa - I am feeling confident, nervous and excited. But what I keep coming back to mountain bike racing is not the finish time. It is the feeling on course. Five years ago, I was new to mountain biking. My skills were basic, I didn’t know trail etiquette, and I felt out of place as an experienced triathlete. What I found instead of judgment was encouragement. Riders passing me were supportive. Strangers at aid stations cheered. People who finished befor...
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The High-Carbohydrate Fueling Revolution: Is it legit?

  The High-Carbohydrate Fueling Revolution: What the Science Actually Says Based on a talk by Dr. Patrick Benjamin Wilson, Old Dominion University — presented at the ACSM Southeast Chapter Conference Elite endurance athletes today are consuming 100, 120 or 200 grams of carbohydrates per hour during competition. Sports nutrition products have never been more sophisticated, more palatable, or more portable. The message from coaches, sports dietitians, and pro athletes seems clear: more carbs, faster performance. But is the science keeping pace? I recently attended the ACSM Southeast Chapter conference and listened to this insightful talk by Dr. Patrick Benjamin Wilson of Old Dominion University. He took a hard look at where the research actually stands and what it still can't tell us about high carb fueling.  How We Got Here: A Brief History of Carb Fueling Guidelines 2009 – ACSM  recommended  30–60 g/hr  to maintain blood glucose levels during exercise. 2011 – Bu...
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Should Coaches Tell Athletes To Lose Weight?

Coaches: Words matter. Telling an athlete to “lose weight” might seem performance-focused but it can trigger disordered eating, damage confidence, and negatively impact performance. Even if the intent is well-meaning, athletes don’t hire a coach for body criticism. They need someone who cares about strength, power, skill, effort, energy, fatigue management, recovery, consistency, confidence, joy, longevity and mental and physical health. Strong and successful athletes come in different sizes, shapes and weights. Coaches: don’t put your focus on making your athletes smaller. Make their potential bigger.
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What The Winter Olympics Teach Us About Body Image

  Every four years, the Winter Olympics remind the world that athletic excellence comes in many shapes, sizes, and stories. From curling, ice skating and short-track speed skating to cross country skiing and hockey, one truth stands out:  your body is your greatest strength, not something to be minimized for someone else’s approval. At the Milano-Cortina Winter Games, athletes understand that to rise to your best, you need to keep your body fueled. Thousands of competitors are eating with purpose, not restriction. Olympic dining halls have served enormous quantities of pasta, pizza, eggs, cheese, and pastries - not as indulgence, but as high-performance fuel to meet the incredible energy demands of needing to compete at the highest level. Organizers of the games estimated athletes consumed the equivalent of 1,800 meters of pizza over the course of the Games, essential calories for rigorous competition. Olympians know something important many of us often forget:  your body...
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Intentional and unintentional pathways to low energy availablity

There has been substantial talk surrounding RED-S and for good reason.  Adequate energy intake is essential for athletic performance, recovery, and long-term health.  Yet many athletes, across all sports and competitive levels, fail to meet their daily energy needs.  A chronic mismatch between energy intake and energy expenditure can lead to low energy availability, impairing performance and increasing the risk of injury, illness, and hormonal disruption.  Although RED-S is often viewed as the result of intentional undereating (when athletes consciously restrict food intake due to performance beliefs, body image concerns, or external pressures) undereating can also occur unintentionally.  Framing RED-S solely as a consequence of deliberate restriction or disordered eating overlooks a substantial subset of athletes who fail to meet their energy needs due to factors such as high training volume, appetite suppression following intense exercise, time constraints, l...
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Indoor Workout Fueling Tips

Within 7 days, Greenville has experienced an ice storm and a snow storm. Needless to say, we've been doing a lot of our training indoors over the past week.    Indoor training, whether it's running on the treadmill or riding on the trainer, is common for most endurance athletes. It’s efficient, controlled, and time‑effective. But when it comes to supporting those sessions with proper fuel and hydration, this is where many athletes struggle to get things right.  Some athletes intentionally underfuel, assuming that indoor sessions “don’t count” as much as outdoor workouts. Or athletes feel safe cutting calories because there's no risk in running out of fuel - you just stop and you are home. Others, however overfuel, grazing out of boredom or because nutrition is sitting on a table within arm’s reach. The sweet spot lies in fueling intentionally.  Why Indoor Workouts Change Your Fueling Needs Indoor training is different from outdoor training in a few key ways: Steadier...
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