Winning Innovation

Introduction

Loud rock music blasted from Pete’s oversized speakers. I was fixed on a video of an old cycling race that was playing on a small screen in front of my winter bike-training class. To my left were a bunch of young bike racers who certainly would have dropped me if we were training on a road. To my right were riders who struggled like me. Although I’d seen the video of the Giro d’Italia at Pete Gladden’s training class often enough to remember every single stage winner, it helped me focus as the 18-minute drill reached its climax. When the drill ended, we spent our three-minute break mostly panting and laughing at jokes my friend John cracked from the back row. As my eyes wandered from the video to the falling snow outside, it hit ...