April 12/10 17:13 pm - Cycling (in the) News

Posted by Editoress on 04/12/10
 

"Women are attracted to cycling because they can compete with men. What women lack in muscle mass can be compensated for by savvy, willpower, and endurance. The bike is a great equalizer becasue the strongest is not always the best." - Connie Carpenter Phinney


Whitten hopes to ride cycling gold all the way to 2012 Olympics
Don’t be fooled by Tara Whitten’s lab coat and demure demeanor.

Once she slips on her cycling shorts, this PhD student is hell on wheels.

Exhibit A: The recent Track Cycling World Championships in Copenhagen, where Whitten ended a 16-year gold medal drought for Canada by winning the women’s omnium, a new Olympic event.
Toronto Star


Pedal power pays
Ex-skier dumps boards for wheels and turns into a champion
Talk about talent. After years of feeling "not quite good enough" in cross-country skiing, Tara Whitten has found a sport in which she could not only qualify for the Olympics, but possibly win.

At 29, Whitten is just three years into a blistering track cycling career. Last month she raced to double gold at the 2010 track cycling worlds in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Toronto Sun


Giant for Women Expands Focus
iant Bicycle has introduced a new national retail education program focused on helping retailers market and sell to women.
Bicycle Retailer


Why Women Bike, and Why They Don't
In Amsterdam, they say, cycling is like breathing - everyone does it and nobody really thinks too much about it. Kids learn to cycle before they are of school age - push cycles abound - and ride (without helmets) to school with or without parent supervision. But we're not in Amsterdam, and women especially have myriad reasons why they don't ride a bike. To get to the heart of the reasons women do and don't cycle, The Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals has created a web-based survey around attitudes toward cycling. By word of social networking, 7,300 women have already responded to the survey, which will run through May 15. Some insights have already emerged, and what is startling is that the top reason (90% of respondents) women do cycle is because of the health benefits.
Tree Hugger


Why Don't More Women Ride?
Significantly fewer women ride bikes than men. It’s a subject I’ve touched on (very briefly) before, but it bears further exploration.

An article in October’s Scientific American reported that men outnumber women cyclists 2-to-1 in America-a fact the writers attribute in large part to cycling infrastructure. They argue that if there were more protected or separated bike lanes running through cities (and not just along waterways and green spaces) more women would ride.
Publiocola


Exercise in pregnancy and baby size
Aerobic exercise during pregnancy ‘produces lighter babies’,” reported The Times. It said researchers have found that women who trained on exercise bikes for 40 minutes up to five times a week had babies who were 143g lighter on average than babies of women who did not exercise.

This relatively small study used a good study design to investigate this question, randomly assigning 98 pregnant women to a personalised cycling programme or a group that did not cycle. Cycling did not affect the women’s BMI or glucose metabolism, but it did affect their babies’ birth weight.
NHS


Estrogen Rising
Although bicycle racing seems to have a testosterone imbalance (and in fact doping tests seem to support this) the estrogen level is rising among Seattle-area road racers. The number of Seattle-area women competing in road races has grown dramatically in the past few years as a result of the dedicated efforts by several veterans, particularly Martha Walsh and Gina Kavesh.
Velocity: The Seattle Area Cycling Blog


Graz’s American Speed Kueen - Part one
With the “shrinking globe,” an American woman plying her trade in Europe is not as much of a cultural oddity as it may have been in the past. But an American woman racing her bicycle on the European circuit full-time, well that is another story.
TripleCrankset

Part 2

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