4ucycling

I would like to address specifically what happens to the quality of endurance sports, when 90% of kids growing up today is not as active in daily life, as they were 15 - 20 years ago. Ask top atheletes in endurance sports about their life as kids and they will all tell you about how active they were. And I'm not necessarily referring to "organized" activities, such as practice etc. It is all the other little things, such as how did they get back and forth from practice (ran, biked etc). How did they get back and forth from school (ran, biked) and basically how active they were growing up, doing all sorts of outdoor activities. All these "little" things led to a very active upbringing, which easily included 15-25 hours of training per week. This training was not "planned" or organized, it didn't get recorded in a training log, it wasn't "planned intervals", but it all consisted of good, sound base training for endurance sports. This ...

There were 45 of us, brave souls all. Under an optimistic blue sky, we stood with our bicycles on the shores of the Bosporus on the Asian side of Istanbul, posing for the camera, helmets strapped on. The date, August 4th, 2007. In 15 minutes, we would embark on what some regarded as an impossible, even a foolish, expedition -- a 10,700 km journey that followed the legendary Silk Road. A three and one- half month trek across Asia, ending in front of Beijing's Forbidden City. Difficult? Certainly. Foolish? Perhaps. Impossible? Not a chance. Indeed, it was not the first such epic bicycle journey that I had undertaken. In January 15, 2003, I and 32 other adventurous spirits embarked on the inaugural run of the Tour d'Afrique -- from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa in 120 punishing days. That very first day, in the shadow of the Pyramids, the question I posed to myself was: 'can this really be done'? Can we cycle every meter -- later acronymed and defined as EF...