Maggie Coles-Lyster

When the majority of the pack in cycling can compete at the same level, winning the race comes down to the marginal gains. Before Road Worlds last year I added a new, extremely valuable tool to my collection... the MightySat Fingertip Pulse Oximeter! Now I am still pretty new to all of the science behind the functions on it, but basically what it does is measures your pulse rate, oxygen saturation, perfusion index, respiration rate and pleth variability index. The pulse rate is pretty self explanatory; how many times your heart beats per minute. The fitter you are, the lower your resting heart rate will be, because more blood is pumped with each pulse; your heart is strengthened to work more efficiently :) One of the most useful measurements I found was the oxygen saturation. It is the measurement, as a percentage, of oxygen in the arterial blood. Higher levels of blood oxygen, means that more oxygen is being transported around the body, thus providing more oxygen to your muscles. ...

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a good holiday season and a great start to 2017! I am writing to you from school, where I am sitting at the window watching people slip on the dreaded 4 inches of ice outside, and stressing about online calculus because the WiFi is down! All negatives aside, here is a summary of my fairly chill past 2 months :) After a successful Junior Road World Championships in Qatar, I took 7 weeks off the bike and decided to not go to Cyclocross Nationals because I was in dire need of a mental and physical break. I still went to the gym, did lots of yoga and TRX and rode my horse, Elmo to try and avoid going stir crazy! However, coming off of an amazing season and the “racing high,” then that shift back into reality, along with time off the bike is very mentally tough. Those first couple of weeks that I was off I was in a super strange headspace and would have these random meltdowns at school and the gym. Yoga was a huge asset for me then, because of the ment...

On another flight home from my third World Championship this year, and bored with homework so time for a little blogging :)! In January, I competed in the U23 Cyclocross World Champs in Zolder, Belgium, then I won a bronze medal at the Junior Track World Champs in Aigle, Switzerland in July, and I am now returning from competing in the Junior Road World Champs in Doha Qatar. It's been a busy year! "It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock 'n' roll!" After receiving the confirmation that I was going to Road Worlds just over 2 weeks before I left, I quickly had to organise my next month. I was only back at school for about a week before I flew out, and have been gone for almost a month! Before heading to Qatar, the junior women squad spent 2 weeks in Belgium, training and racing. The four junior women who were selected were the same girls who went to Junior Track Worlds- Erin Attwell, Devaney Collier, Laurie Jussaume and me, of course! This made i...

5 weeks away from home, 3 different beds, 3 crashes, National and World class racing, 12 amazing teammates and probably most impressively, a bronze medal in the women’s omnium at Junior Track World Championships! After Nationals, me, Erin, Cam Fitzmaurice and John Willcox piled into a car with our bikes and drove 5 hours to Milton, Ontario, where the next 2 weeks were spent training at the 250m velodrome. The training was intense, with usually two sessions a day and included some longer road rides to keep the endurance up. As well, we did lots of team pursuit work on the track to get me, Erin, Ali Vanyzendoorn, Devaney Collier and Laurie Jussaume up to speed as the first Junior Women’s team pursuit team Canada has sent to Worlds in around 4 years. We grew very close over the total of 4 weeks that we lived together, and had a blast building our relationship as teammates and friends, as not many of us knew each other too well before this. Card playing, nail painting, baking and a trip...

5 weeks away from home, 3 different beds, 3 crashes, National and World class racing, 12 amazing teammates and probably most impressively, a bronze medal in the women’s omnium at Junior Track World Championships! My amazing adventure started June 21st, with the last day of grade 11. The final bell rang and I raced out of there to go pack my bikes at home in preparation for my red-eye flight that night. I also was asked to go talk at a coaches and teachers conference, that afternoon, about my bike racing and how to inspire school kids to do sports and be competitive. I had planned out my day accordingly to make my transition onto Ontario’s time zone as smooth as possible- which included eating an early dinner, then sleeping right away on the plane. When we landed in the morning, I had a quick breakfast and my classic decaf mocha, then drove to Gatineau, Quebec to Philemon Wright Secondary School, where I was set to take Science Humaines 11 (social studies) provincial exam, because ...

With post race depression already setting in, I thought it would be best to take a break from my homework and use the plane time to write up a blog about this past weekend! I have been so stocked ever since last years Junior track Nationals in October, where I found out that they were going to host another track Nationals/Worlds qualifiers 6 months later! So back to Milton, Ontario I went last week (March 28th) to ride the glorious 250m velodrome. Leading up to track Nationals, our focus was on recovery. After having finished my Cyclocross season with the World Championships in Belgium at the end of January, I took a bit of time off, but then it was right back on the bike to start my prep for Nationals. I found that I would get a lactic acid flow happening in my legs almost everytime I got on my bike, so we set out to find ways of getting rid of that. Massage, eating and drinking properly, hot and cold showers as well as compression and recovery creams were part of my daily rout...