The Six-day Bicycle Races


Book Description

A photographic portrait of what was the most popular spectator sport in America during the period from 1900 to 1930: 6-day bicycle racing. It was a big-money sport, because bets were on. The sport was tough and the stakes were high, as the most prominent people in society flocked to Madison Square Garden to watch the races and place their bets. This compilation of historic photographs reproduced in fine duotone detail and accompanying text paints the complete picture of this fascinating but almost forgotten era in American sports.




Bicycle / Race


Book Description

"A study of the U.S. bicycle transportation movement against a backdrop of racism and history in Los Angeles and Washington, DC"--




Women on the Move


Book Description

The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze, and consumers, including women, were buying bicycles in large numbers. Despite critics who tried to discourage women from trying this new sport, women took to the bike in huge numbers, and mastery of the bicycle became a metaphor for women's mastery over their lives. Spurred by the emergence of the "safety" bicycle and the ensuing cultural craze, women's professional bicycle racing thrived in the United States from 1895 to 1902. For seven years, female racers drew large and enthusiastic crowds across the country, including Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and New Orleans--and many smaller cities in between. Unlike the trudging, round-the-clock marathons the men (and their spectators) endured, women's six-day races were tightly scheduled, fast-paced, and highly competitive. The best female racers of the era--Tillie Anderson, Lizzie Glaw, and Dottie Farnsworth--became household names and were America's first great women athletes. Despite concerted efforts by the League of American Wheelmen to marginalize the sport and by reporters and other critics to belittle and objectify the women, these athletes forced turn-of-the-century America to rethink strongly held convictions about female frailty and competitive spirit. By 1900 many cities began to ban the men's six-day races, and it became more difficult to ensure competitive women's races and attract large enough crowds. In 1902 two racers died, and the sport's seven-year run was finished--and it has been almost entirely ignored in sports history, women's history, and even bicycling history. Women on the Move tells the full story of America's most popular arena sport during the 1890s, giving these pioneering athletes the place they deserve in history.




Hearts of Lions


Book Description

Bike racers were America’s media darlings less than a century ago—dashing, eccentric, and very rich daredevils. Until the 1920s bike races drew larger crowds than all other American sports events, including Major League Baseball games. Prize-winning racer and journalist Peter Joffre Nye vividly re-creates this period of sports history, forgotten until now, in Hearts of Lions, a true story of courage, daring, and occasional lunacy. Revised, updated, and expanded, this second edition of Hearts of Lions is based on interviews with more than one thousand cyclists whose racing careers span from 1908 through the 2016 Rio Olympics, along with interviews with trainers and family members. Included are stories about Joseph Magnani, the lone American from southern Illinois who rode on the dusty roads of Europe in road racing’s golden era of the 1930s and 1940s; Lance Armstrong, whose rise in the mid-1990s was eclipsed in the doping era that still casts a long shadow over the sport; Kristin Armstrong, a three-time Olympic gold medalist who set new standards for women in cycling; and Evelyn “Evie” Stevens, who chucked a Wall Street career in her mid-twenties to compete in two Olympics and win several world championship gold medals. Hearts of Lions is a colorful, exciting, classic work on the art of bicycle racing over 140 years against a backdrop of social, political, and technical changes.




Eric's Big Day


Book Description

Eric rides his bicycle through his village to join his friend Emily for a picnic, but his trip is slowed as he comes to the aid of racing bicyclists using helpful items from his backpack, yet he continues to rush, trying his best not to disappoint Emily, leading to a surprising finish.







Pedestrianism


Book Description

Strange as it sounds, during the 1870s and 1880s, America’s most popular spectator sport wasn’t baseball, football, or horseracing—it was competitive walking. Inside sold-out arenas, competitors walked around dirt tracks almost nonstop for six straight days (never on Sunday), risking their health and sanity to see who could walk the farthest—more than 500 miles. These walking matches were as talked about as the weather, the details reported in newspapers and telegraphed to fans from coast to coast. This long-forgotten sport, known as pedestrianism, spawned America’s first celebrity athletes and opened doors for immigrants, African Americans, and women. But along with the excitement came the inevitable scandals, charges of doping and insider gambling, and even a riot in 1879. Pedestrianism chronicles competitive walking’s peculiar appeal and popularity, its rapid demise, and its enduring influence.




The Velocipede Races


Book Description

Emmeline Escot knows that she was born to ride in Seren’s cutthroat velocipede races. The only problem: She’s female in a world where women lead tightly laced lives. Emmeline watches her twin brother gain success as a professional racing jockey while her own life grows increasingly narrow. Ever more stifled by rules, corsets, and her upcoming marriage of convenience to a brusque stranger, Emmy rebels—with stunning consequences. Can her dream to race survive scandal, scrutiny, and heartbreak?




The World's Fastest Man


Book Description

In the tradition of The Boys in the Boat and Seabiscuit, a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking but forgotten figure—the remarkable Major Taylor, the black man who broke racial barriers by becoming the world’s fastest and most famous bicyclist at the height of the Jim Crow era. In the 1890s, the nation’s promise of equality had failed spectacularly. While slavery had ended with the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws still separated blacks from whites, and the excesses of the Gilded Age created an elite upper class. Amidst this world arrived Major Taylor, a young black man who wanted to compete in the nation’s most popular and mostly white man’s sport, cycling. Birdie Munger, a white cyclist who once was the world’s fastest man, declared that he could help turn the young black athlete into a champion. Twelve years before boxer Jack Johnson and fifty years before baseball player Jackie Robinson, Taylor faced racism at nearly every turn—especially by whites who feared he would disprove their stereotypes of blacks. In The World’s Fastest Man, years in the writing, investigative journalist Michael Kranish reveals new information about Major Taylor based on a rare interview with his daughter and other never-before-uncovered details from Taylor’s life. Kranish shows how Taylor indeed became a world champion, traveled the world, was the toast of Paris, and was one of the most chronicled black men of his day. From a moment in time just before the arrival of the automobile when bicycles were king, the populace was booming with immigrants, and enormous societal changes were about to take place, The World’s Fastest Man shines a light on a dramatic moment in American history—the gateway to the twentieth century.




Training and Racing with a Power Meter, 2nd Ed.


Book Description

Hunter Allen and Andy Coggan, PhD have completely revised the book that made power meters understandable for amateur and professional cyclists and triathletes. Power meters have become essential tools for competitive cyclists and triathletes. No training tool can unlock as much speed and endurance as a power meter--for those who understand how to interpret their data. A power meter displays and records exactly how much energy a cyclist expends, which lends unprecedented insight into that rider's abilities and fitness. With the proper baseline data, a cyclist can use a power meter to determine race strategy, pacing, and tactics. Training and Racing with a Power Meter makes it possible to exploit the incredible usefulness of the power meter by explaining how to profile strengths and weaknesses, measure fitness and fatigue, optimize workouts, time race readiness, and race using power. This new edition: Enables athletes to predict future performance and time peak form Introduces fatigue profiling, a new testing method to pinpoint weaknesses Includes two training plans to raise functional threshold power and time peaks for race day Offers 75 power-based workouts tuned for specific training goals This updated edition also includes new case studies, a full chapter on triathlon training and racing, and improved 2-color charts and tables throughout. Training and Racing with a Power Meter, will continue to be the definitive guide to the most important training tool ever developed for endurance sports.