After a scary walk down the yellow brick road a medal was placed on the chest of the lion. Poof! He was a coward no more. He was now, a courageous lion.

The only thing to change was his state of mind.

If you have been to the airport criterium lately you have probably noticed that there are a lot of talented young juniors in Chico all of a sudden. Since Rodney started the Category C races we have seen many new faces and most of them aren't just pedaling in circles out there, these kids are racing!

Last Tuesday a break of four 10-12 year olds put the hammer down and lapped the field. The break stayed away to the finish where they came out of the final corner at a whopping 27 MPH! Remember these are the same kids who only a few weeks ago were still figuring out how to shift a road bike...

Meetings: The next Corsa Club Meeting will be at Woodstocks Pizza on Friday July 3rd at 6PM.

Announcements:
Mark Woodson has setup a Bikely account for the Corsa Group to map their favorite rides to share with the local cycling community. His goal was to provide an opportunity to create, post and access local routes that have been vetted by our cycling community and are easily searchable. He hopes to see your favorite Chico road and mountain bike routes posted as well as good rides in the Paradise/Oroville/Orland areas.

Please don't show routes from your house or other private locations, but use common starting points like the Chico airport, One Mile Park, Rosedale School, the Fairgrounds and other known starting locations.

For those who wish to login and map a ride the username is: chicobikely and the password is: chicobike. The address is: here.

Race Results:
From now on race results will be posted to the Chico Corsa Website in the race team section. (You will need a login and password to post your results)

Breaking News:
Rumor has it that U.S. National Junior Team member Ian Boswell will be moving to Chico soon. Having used Chico as a home base for winter training last year, the climate, terrain and local cycling community apparently made enough of an impression on him that he wants to call it home year around now.

For those who don't know Ian, he is one of the biggest talents to come along in years. In fact, last weekend he won the Junior's race at Nevada City in an impressive solo breakaway and shortly thereafter raced the Pro 1-2 race and was the only rider to hang with Lance Armstrong, Levi Liepheimer and Ben Jaques-Maynes for any length of time.

Let's hope some of the magic will rub off on the rest of us...

R.A.C.E. Calendar:
Chico Cyclist

NCNCA Road Racing Calendar:
NCNCA Road Calendar

NORBA Calendar:
NORBA Racing
TBF Challenge MTB Races
MTB Calendar - California

Chico Velo Calendar:
Chico Velo

Rising stars:
Anthony Ferretti dominated the Gold Nugget Junior Stage Race, winning two stages and the overall. He has also done well in some high powered Junior fields leaving no doubt we can expect big things from him in the future.

Lindsay Myers had a successful campaign with the U.S. National Team in France and then came home to finish 6th in the Women's race at Nevada City. (more details about her National Team experiences will be coming soon)

And finally, Maggie Jones won all three Junior Women's road events at Districts (Road Race, Criterium and Time Trial) to bring her win total in her first season of racing to 10 so far...

Things are looking promising for the future of cycling in Chico!

This month I would like to talk about "Fatigue', 'Overreaching' and the dreaded 'Overtraining'. If you put in a good hard winter and spring training effort (those that did know who you arre... plus, your results show it) then there's a good chance you could be hitting these stages about this time of the year.

'Fatigue with training' refers to the tiredness one feels after riding. It is part of the training process in gradually increasing the work-load. In fact it is the stimulus which leads to adaptation and performance improvement. Fatigue lets us know that we are pushing our physical limits. However, in certain circumstances, fatigue can be a warning that we are pushing too hard (that there is an imbalance between exercise and recovery), and can indicate the need to back off or risk an actual deterioration in our performance. This is a common dilemma in a good personal training program. Hard work makes you faster, but only up to a certain point. After exceeding that limit, hard work might just make you slower.

I made a point this winter and spring to try different cycling events than I usually do: an airport crit and a Mesilla road race. If you don't try new things, you'll never know if you like them, right? Both were fine, and I'm sure that with some practice I could get better, but my favorite thing to do on a bike is still to go out on a long climbing ride in the middle of nowhere and see some new country.

Once I get out of Chico in the real rural areas, I realize how busy Chico's become. With around 100,000 people in the area, you're going to run into (literally at times in my case) a lot more cars than you do in counties that have fewer than half the population of Chico alone. And I hate to say it, but in a lot of rural counties they have better road surfaces than in Butte- better work ethic, or just a lot fewer cars to beat up the roads?

The US Olympic Training Center (or OTC as it is more commonly known) is located in Colorado Springs, Colorado in the shadow of Pikes Peak. It sits in a pocket on the southeastern slopes of the Front Range at 6200 feet. In the summer it is a nice place to train, but during the winter it's a godforsaken frozen tundra.

Unfortunately to maintain your status on the National Team in the early 90's you had to 'play the game' and part of that game was doing time at the OTC. The National Team coaches made it clear that the only way to Barcelona was through the Training Center. It didn't matter if you won every race between January and August, unless you spent time at the OTC and developed a relationship with the coaches you would never go to Spain... (Technically, if you won the Olympic Trials you were guaranteed a spot on the Team, but that still didn't mean they would let you ride at the Games)