Stop Pushing Boulders, Start Moving Mountains

Posted on June 22, 2017 by Syd Schulz

Photo: Noah Wetzel

You know when you read something and you’re like, “oh shit, that’s totally me”? Well, that was my reaction to this passage when I stumbled up on it during my morning reading. Immediate recognition. Yup, I’m the kid with the square pegs and the round holes. I’m the one pushing boulders up a hill. I have always struggled, especially with my athletic career, but really in general, with the fact that more effort does not always equal better outcomes. I want to be faster so I work harder, train more, log more hours on the bike. I want to be better at racing, so I do more races, because surely the problem is just lack of experience and the more the better?

And over the past few months, this habit of “more more more” has actually gotten worse (despite the fact that I’ve recognized it….). When I was forced off the bike in February due to some knee issues, I lost some really crucial training time. Instead of gradually working back into it, as soon as my knee was better I jumped right back into five hour rides prepping for the first two EWS races in New Zealand. My coach scheduled in a two hour ride — I rode for seven. When will I ever learn?

When we returned to the US, there was a massive snafu with our van being towed right before Sea Otter (you can watch our vlog about it here), all of which lost me some more valuable training time, which left me, guess what, frantically trying to make up for that by scheduling in extra workouts and “training through” the first Enduro Cup in Moab — training through being code for knowingly sabotaging my race by doing intervals two days before. Which might have been okay under other circumstances, that race not being a focus for me, but unfortunately I was already on a collision course for exhaustion. Fast forward three weeks, and I contracted a mystery virus that plagued me for two weeks and set off a bunch of mystery allergies that I’m still dealing with now.

I was pushing boulders. Pushing boulders is the opposite of “going with the flow.” Pushing boulders is all force and no right effort. Pushing boulders is exhausting and frustrating and ineffective, because you feel like you’re doing everything and yet, those damn mountains refuse to budge. I have been pushing boulders for a long time now.

It’s an interesting aspect of the human psyche — the fact that we seem to be hardwired to keep doing the same things, even when they don’t work. I see this all the time in others, although I’m usually the last to see it in myself. Change is difficult — especially real change. We’re quick to change the easy things. We try different workouts, different diets, different equipment, but when the problem is elsewhere — say, in our mindset or our lifestyle — we’re slow to address it. We simply swap one boulder for another, fill up the void with chatter and action, instead of, as Mumford suggests in the quote at the top of this page “getting silent.”

A lot of my issues over the past 18 months have stemmed from a total refusal to get silent. Overuse knee injuries, mental burnout, illness, crippling fears, incredibly stressful travel arrangements — all of these were avoidable to some extent or another, but truly fixing the situation would have meant sacrifices I didn’t want to make. Like less travel, less insane turnarounds, less expectations. These are not impossible sacrifices to make, although at certain points they certainly felt like it. As a good friend and fellow racer told me after last weekend’s race “maybe you just need to start saying no.”

It’s hard to say no to fun opportunities and races (hello, #firstworldproblems), but something I obviously need to get better about. This past week I made the decision to skip the third round of the National Enduro Series, as well as the opportunity to explore Montana and northern Idaho, two new places for me. This also meant sending Macky on a thirty hour driving mission by himself, which I still feel a little guilty about. But it was definitely some progress in the right direction.

Changing my mindset to be more in line with my goals will not be an overnight process, but I’m starting to recognize the incongruities and seeing where improvements could be made. And in the long run, I’m determined to stop pushing boulders so that one day, maybe, I can move mountains.

Ask Syd: Should MTB Coaches Have Race Experience?

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Syd Schulz

Hi Syd,

First- thank you for writing some awesome content that I find really, truly valuable! I saw your post on MTB project’s blog and literally each point I was like, “yep” “amen, sista!” “hell yes!”

I love mountain biking and I love the community that comes with it. I’ve recently been doing some more coaching/teaching for beginners/intermediate riders – and I’m planning on becoming a certified coach (to legitimize myself).

What I’m struggling with is the fact that many of the amazing women coaches I’ve met are also racers or have raced. So I immediately start to feel like I’m not worthy of coaching – because I’m not shreddin’ it in a race setting. So I guess I’d love your input on this.

Also, I should mention I’m not opposed to racing. I’ve never tried. – If I had to pick a type of race, it’d probably be Enduro. My fears aren’t necessarily performance based… I’m not a super competitive person by nature and I fear being race-focused that I might start to enjoy mountain biking less.

So if you have any tips on why and when you should try/start racing – that’d also be much appreciated.

Thanks again,

Jess

Racing (and nearly hitting a tree) in Moab. Photo: Noah Wetzel

This question from Jess came at really good time, as I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about WHY I race, and how important that really is to me. I figured I’d post my answer up as it might be helpful, interesting, or at least discussion-provoking. For the record, this is coming from my perspective as a racer, not a skills coach — so I’d be super interested in hearing from any coaches out there on whether or not you see racing (or having race experience) as essential to what you do.

Here’s my response:

Hey Jess,

Thanks for the message!

First off, I should just admit that I have a serious love/hate relationship with racing, which you probably know if you’ve read any of my blog posts. Racing has really, really pushed me as an athlete, especially in the mental arena — it’s also really broken me down and made me feel like shit about myself and made me not want to ride my bike. It’s hard to not seeing racing as a venue to “prove” yourself and I would caution you about going into racing with the idea of legitimizing yourself as a coach. This could be really frustrating — or who knows, maybe you’d do super well and it would be empowering. But it’s a risk. There are a lot of good riders out there who are, quite frankly, terrible racers (I know because I am one — I’m working on it, but still!), and not having race results doesn’t mean you can’t be an incredible coach. After all, if you’re coaching intermediate/beginner riders, most of them probably just want to feel more comfortable on the bike and be less scared and they really probably don’t need that much advice on racing.

All that said, I do think racing can be incredibly valuable and it WILL push your skill level and force you out of your comfort zone. Racing, especially enduro racing (okay, I’m biased), makes you a better all-round rider, because you’re forced to confront your weaknesses instead of just relying on your strengths. Like, if you don’t like riding in the mud, why go out on a slippery day unless you know that someday you might have to race in that and you better freaking prepare yourself? Some people have the intrinsic motivation to improve to a very high level just for the sake of improving, but in reality I think most of us will just avoid the stuff we don’t like unless we’re forced to confront it.

As for whether racing will make you enjoy mountain biking less, I think that depends a lot on how much importance you give racing (and results). For me, racing is rarely fun, and when I put too much pressure on myself to “just have fun” that is when I experience the most burnout because I’m like “omg why am I not having fun what’s wrong with me.” The more I see racing as a challenge, and something that will ultimately be very fulfilling if not exactly fun in the moment, the more I enjoy the experience as a whole, and the more I improve on the bike — which makes me love mountain biking more. That’s just what works for me, and maybe you will find racing itself fun, who knows. But if you don’t, you’re not weird or anything.

So in conclusion, I would say, yeah, you might as well try a race or two, because why not? Just go into with the mindset of “whatever I learn here will make me a better coach,” not “I have to get x result to be a good coach” because that is bound to fail, no matter how well you do. Even if you don’t get a good result or whatever, dealing with that disappointment or frustration will give you perspective to help your clients. And if you find out that you simply don’t WANT to race, that’s okay, too and probably a lot of people you will work with will feel that way too.

Of course, there will always be those people who only want to be coached by people with World Cup DH results or whatever, and frankly, those people are dumb, because just because someone can go fast doesn’t mean they can teach someone else to go fast. I have seen this firsthand — lots of fast people have bugger all idea how they do it, and good coaches can’t always put into practice what they see, but they SEE it, and they can help their clients see it, and that is about 1000x more valuable than somebody going “I dunno just don’t use ya brakes and go fast brah.”

Hope that helps and sorry for rambling!

Cheers,
Syd

How Do You Train for Enduro?

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Syd Schulz

Hi Syd,
Since you just wrapped up a series on skills practice, I would like to see a post about your overall training through the year. Like, what kind of fitness training (both on and/or off the bike) are you doing leading up to your season and what kind of training do you do in between races when you are in the heaviest part of season.
I always look forward to your new posts, and I find them much more interesting than the normal “this is what happened at my race” reports that many riders write.
Thanks,
Lindsay

This question from Lindsay made me realize that I’ve pretty much neglected writing about my training on this blog. This isn’t because I don’t think training is important — obviously, it’s super important — but more because I don’t consider myself a training expert. I have a coach and a strength trainer/PT who write all of my workouts and basically save me from myself on a weekly basis. It’s really, really hard to train yourself, especially if you kinda know nothing about sports physiology. I tried to do it in 2014/15 and it was a total disaster that resulted in jacked up knees and me being sick like seven times in one year due to effectively riding myself into the ground.

I started working with Daniel Matheny (Matheny Endurance) last winter and I cannot express how great it is to have someone writing your training plan — having planned workouts eliminates all those nagging thoughts of “am I doing enough” and “is this even the kind of workout I should be doing” that plagued me before I started working with Daniel. Now, I just put my head down and do it, and it’s great. Also, Daniel’s really good about figuring out when I need more rest, just based on the power/HR numbers he’s seeing, so even if I’m lying and saying I’m fine, he tells me to rest more. While I had plenty of other mishaps this year, I managed to make it through the season without that miserable mid-August cold that caught me out the past few years. Recovery is key!!!

Since 2016 was (apparently) my year for dealing with shit I should have dealt with ages ago, I started working with Dane Delozier from Revo PT and Performance in May, trying to heal up my persistent knee tendinitis. Since then, I’ve been working with Dane to build strength generally and to keep improving my knees (and a few other grouchy body parts). Through this process I’ve discovered some serious areas of foundational weakness and bad movement and have been working to address them. (If you’re interested in how different movements affect mountain bikers, Dane writes a column for MTB Project and it’s worth checking out.)

Today's workout was rough. Nothing really went as planned, from mechanicals right off the bat, to the batteries on all my electronics dying from the cold. And also the fact that it was really freaking cold and I felt like my toes were going to fall off. There are so many athletes and fitness gurus on IG acting like every workout leaves you feeling amazing and full of endorphins and covered in just enough sweat for a sexy glisten but not so much that it's gross. But screw that. Training isn't supposed to be pretty or photogenic. It's supposed to be hard. It's supposed to make you tough. It's supposed to make you suffer. So bring it on. #trainingselfie #idoitforthegains #mtb #mtblife #nofilter #onthewords #thephotototallyhasafilter

A photo posted by Syd Schulz (@sydgschulz) on Jan 7, 2017 at 3:09pm PST

Training for enduro in the off-season is all about training your weaknesses. For me that means strength work and high power work. I’m naturally an endurance athlete, so I don’t worry about being out on the bike for seven or eight hours a day. While having some base is great, I can always pull a big day out of my ass if I have to. However, before I started training with Daniel, my peak power for anything from 10sec to 5min was pretty poor. I had also really never done any strength work at all before last fall, so while I was “fit,” I wasn’t very strong. And enduro is all about strong.

That said, if you’re interested in training for enduro, I really do recommend working with a coach to tease out your weaknesses — if you come from a power sports background (i.e. DH racing, DH skiing) you might need to work on your base more than I do. Even though enduro racers don’t actually race for seven hours, being out that long is no joke.

This winter, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the gym focusing on big-muscle movements, like squats, deadlifts, etc. and really dialing in my movement to make sure my knees are doing what they should be doing. On the bike, I’ve been doing a mix of short sprints (20 – 40 sec) and longer lactate threshold work to make sure I can punch it for an eight to 12 minute stage. Also, I’ve been riding fun trails, because fun is important too. As it gets closer to the start of the season, the intervals will probably get shorter, and once the season starts my strength work will probably dial down to more of a maintenance level to avoid too much fatigue going into races.

Training for enduro during the race season is tricky because between racing and pre-riding you sometimes end up with very, very high volume weekends. This makes it hard to fit in adequate recovery AND training between races. This is where having a coach is really key, as they are able to give you some perspective on when you should be training and when you should be resting and preparing for the next race. Left to my own devices, I tend to over do it.

Basically, training is all about balance, addressing your weaknesses and consistency. Sometimes you have to get out there and get it done when you don’t want to or the weather is nasty. That’s just life. Having a structured plan (and someone to keep you accountable) is a huge part of this.

Thanks for the question, Lindsay, hope this helps! :)

My Complicated Relationship with Mud (and some tips for shredding wet trails)

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Syd Schulz

Ah, mud-riding. Another thing for the list of “things-I-really-should-be-good-at-but-totally-am-not.” Because, really, I should be good at riding wet stuff. I grew up in Southern Ohio, riding trails that were dry, like, maybe three weeks of the year. And then I went to school in Vermont and started racing mountain bikes at the collegiate level. There was one year where I’m pretty sure every single collegiate race was a mud bath. Like drivechain so clogged with mud that you can barely pedal and you have to replace pretty much everything afterwards. And I remember really enjoying this and actually winning a surprising amount of XC races. Look, here I am all covered in mud and stupidly happy about it, circa 2011.

Look ma, no knee pads!

So, what the hell changed? Here’s my grand theory (on mountain biking and life in general): if you don’t do a thing, you won’t be good at the thing. And sometimes the “thing” in question is annoyingly specific, like, in this case “riding a mountain bike down a steep, muddy, root-covered hillside at high speeds.” The fact that I’m relatively good at riding XC style trails at XC speeds in wet conditions has, in fact, been 0% helpful in racing enduro in the mud. I learned to go fast in New Mexico on dry, gravelly, baby heads. So, shocker, that’s what I’m good at going fast on. Give me ruts, give me sand, give me loose berms. But puhhhhhlease nothing wet.

The rules and tricks I picked up learning to ride relatively non-techy wet stuff have, if anything, proved counter-productive. For example, “avoid sideways roots when wet” is not terribly helpful when faced with a trail that is, in fact, nothing but wet, slippery, sideways roots. And “don’t use your brakes when on slippery surfaces” is equally unhelpful when the trail is extremely steep (and slippery) for extended periods of time and the steep bits tend to end in turns that you would inevitably overshoot if you just let go of the brakes.

This is about how well these rules worked for me on the one wet stage in Crested Butte last year:

Recently, I’ve been getting some proper practice riding gnarly wet stuff (Thanks Cyclone Pam!) and I’ve had some revelations. First off, it’s okay that I suck at this, because, seriously, I have never ridden anything like this. It would be like thinking I could race motocross just because I can make it to the grocery store and back on my parents’ 50cc scooter. Secondly, if it rains right before the Enduro World Series race this weekend, I may be better off ditching my bike and bringing a sled, because HOLY SHIT.

So, here goes. If you’re interested in learning along with me, here are my recently-acquired tips for riding scary things in the mud:

1. Trust your tires. So, by extension, invest in tires you can trust. Somehow I managed to make it until this week without ever really using a mud tire in the mud. I hadn’t really seen the point. {Yes, I’m a dumbass.} This week I had the dubious privilege of riding the steepest, rootiest, wettest trail in Rotorua twice, once with a Vittoria Tires Goma and once with Vittoria’s mud tire, the Jafaki. The Goma is an awesome tire. I rode it in every race last year. I love it and I would happily ride it forever and always because swapping tires is a pain in the ass. But it’s just not a mud tire. On round one down this trail I probably crashed 20 times. Both my tires were so gummed up you couldn’t even see the tread. I whacked my head on the ground. There *may* have been tears. Round two went a lot better. I actually had traction on some of the turns because the Jafaki sheds mud like a boss. I attempted everything and rode most of the trail and I only crashed around five times, which is way better than 20. So, tires matter.

2. Modulate your front/rear brakes. Riding in wet stuff requires that you pay way, way, way more attention to your brakes. I learned early on, as a 14-year-old riding slippery Ohio singletrack, to just never use my front brake. This was certainly the safest method. And since my speeds topped out at, like, 8 mph, this worked out pretty well. Fast forward 10 years and I have a 200mm front rotor, a 180mm rear, 2.4 tires with huge knobs and I often have to slam on both brakes as hard as possible to slow down enough to make a turn. Because I’m going that much faster. So, “don’t use your front brake” is another unhelpful tidbit. That said, riding steep, wet trails in Rotorua has forced me to re-evaluate my jam and slam technique and learn a more graceful “brake dance.” It goes like this — enter corner, use both brakes to scrub speed, begin turning, let off front brake and slam on the rear, let rear wheel slide all the way around, re-apply front brake (if necessary), exit corner. If there are roots in this corner (and there probably are), you’ll have to adjust this technique so that you’re off both the brakes when crossing the roots.

3. Embrace the slide, and then learn to control it. Sometimes you slide. Sometimes it’s just your rear tire sliding and this can actually be pretty helpful, assuming it’s sliding in the desired direction. Sometimes both of your tires are sliding and this is really pretty terrifying but doesn’t *always* mean you’re doomed. I have hardly mastered this, but the less I freak out when I slide, the better things seem to turn out. (This is applicable to pretty much everything in life, not just sliding.)

4. Accept that you’re not going to be clipped in. Sometimes pulling out a foot to dab is the best way to save a squirrelly corner without losing a ton of speed. This means you then have loads of mud stuck to your foot and you’re just not going to get back into your pedals before that next slippery roll-in. So jam your foot onto your pedal and hope for the best. It really will be okay.

5. Ride in the mud. I know, DUH. I contemplated putting “learn to read the terrain” as one of these tips but then I realized that the only way to accomplish that is just by doing it. Riding in the mud and doing everything wrong. Over and over again. Until you start to understand when to be light on your bike and when to be heavy, when to brake and when to definitely NOT brake. Going back to my grand theory, you will never be good at things you don’t do. So, do the things that scare you until they aren’t scary anymore. Do the things you’re bad at, even if you don’t want to. If a trail makes you cry and fall to pieces, go do it again. And again. And again. Improving isn’t pretty, but it’s fairly simple when you get right down to it.

I’m hardly an expert on this topic, so please feel free to chime in if you think I missed something important. I’d like to say that I’ve embraced the wet and that I won’t even care if it rains before this weekend’s race, but that’s hardly true. I’m still crossing my fingers for some hitherto unsuspected and seasonally improbable drought. Of course, it’s pouring rain as I type this, so it’s not looking good on that front. On the bright side, it looks like I’ll have ample opportunity to put my own tips to use. With any luck, I’ll finish in one piece, covered in mud, with a smile on my face.

Here’s What You Learn When You Do the Things You’re “Bad” At

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Syd Schulz

I am a klutz. This has been a central truth of my life since I turned 12 and sprouted up to almost six feet tall. Yes, I was the world’s most awkward middle schooler, we don’t need to go there. Things have improved somewhat in the past few years, but I still have a long way to go. My dad says that he hit peak coordination at age 35, so, you know, I’m not holding my breath.

I follow some really cool cats on instagram (you know who you are) who are always posting pictures of themselves doing yoga on mountain tops and other beautiful places. Sometimes they even do headstands. I want to be them. But then I try to do a tree pose on a mountain top and it looks like this, because, unfortunately, I’m basically a tree, as is, and we all know that tree pose is a ridiculous concept because TREES DON’T DO YOGA.

I pretty routinely walk into walls and stub my toes and break plates for no apparent reason other than that I forget I am carrying them. I’m basically a mess. I also race enduro mountain bikes, which, for all intents and purposes, is kind of a sport for coordinated people. I imagine this is a surprise for some people — not necessarily that I became a serious athlete, but that I did so in a sport that requires skill, fast-twitch muscles, body-space awareness, etc., because, for most of my life, my talents so obviously lay elsewhere.

For example, I have always been really good at continuing slowly in a straight line for an extended period of time. I discovered this in middle school, when, right around the peak of my awkwardness, I joined the track team. After brief and tumultuous careers with hurdles and pole vault (read: one track meet), I settled on long-distance events and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. Here was something that Syd could do relatively well, and with pretty limited risk of hurting herself or others. Phew.

And, as it turned out, I was pretty good at running in circles. I even had just enough body-space awareness to survive cross-country running races without twisting my ankles, which was pretty much all that was required for me to become a long-distance running star in rural Ohio. I wasn’t spectacular, but I was good enough that people said I had promise. People said I could run in college, or that I should try half-marathons, or full marathons or maybe even ultras. It was pretty clear — where I was concerned, the longer the better. If it was a race of attrition, it was all mine. If it came down to a sprint, I was doomed.

Here I am at a track meet in high school and if it looks like my eyes are closed, it’s probably because they were. (Which explains A LOT actually.)

For the 10 years following my first ever track meet, I stuck to “straight-line” sports. Swimming, cycling, running. I dabbled in triathlons and road cycling and started racing cross-country mountain bikes in college. As far as the mountain biking went, the less technical, the better. And, naturally, the longer the better.

And then, last year, 11 years after I first tripped over a hurdle and nearly speared myself on the pole vault, I started racing enduro.

Here is a brief one sentence explanation of enduro for those who still aren’t clear on what it is (which, by the way, is almost everyone and includes people who race it, so don’t feel bad): enduro is a series of timed downhill stages over the course of a day (or two or three or five days, depending on the race), in which racers pedal to the start and then race down the hill, traversing technical rocky sections and going off jumps and drops and generally just trying to go very, very fast.

Put another way, everything I’m bad at. Then add in the fact that the average enduro stage is under 15 minutes, and according to basically everyone, I should be totally, utterly hopeless. But the funny thing is that I’m not (at least not totally).

I have a feeling I know why that might be — I did my first enduro race because it looked fun. Not because I thought I would be good at it. With the exception of one just-for-fun water polo class in college (in which I may or may not have gotten a concussion), it was the first time I had embarked on an athletic endeavor without thinking, oh hey, maybe I’ll be good at this, maybe this will be my thing. The very first time. How messed up is that?

My high school coaches weren’t wrong about me — my natural talent probably does lie in long-distance events. I was the one who was wrong when I took “natural talent” to be a dictum of what I should be doing. I was wrong when I thought I had to be immediately talented at something for it to be “my thing.”

Photo: Nick Ontiveros

It would be a lie to say that my first season racing pro enduro was all fun and games. I basically cried myself through my first three races. Old habits die hard — and so do old expectations. Somewhere along the line I had trained myself to expect immediate success. Don’t worry, I know this is stupid, but sometimes it can be hard to be logical in the face of what your brain is telling you, over and over again, is failure. Somewhere around the middle of the season, I had a mental breakthrough. I started to be able to see my own improvements –even though I was still lagging behind my competitors — and I stopped being afraid of failing. Because, frankly, being last while doing something you love is hardly the worst thing that can happen to a person. (Hint: not doing the thing you love because you’re afraid of being last is WAY WORSE.)

I can say completely honestly that I have almost no natural talent for racing enduro. I can’t sprint to save my life (at least not yet, that’s this winter’s project), I require a two-hour warm up to not feel like crap, and sometimes I forget what I’m doing and fall over at 0.5mph and impale my face on my handlebar. Then I have to go to the hospital and get seven stitches in my chin and explain to every single person I see that, no, nope, wasn’t doing anything epic at all.

**warning: slightly graphic picture of the gaping hole in my face #sorrymom***

However, I can also say, completely honestly, that having no natural talent for enduro is the best thing that has ever happened to me, athletically speaking. While being naturally talented at something can be great, more often than not it is just a gigantic and completely unhelpful mind-fuck. I’m starting to realize that it’s lot more satisfying to be really bad at something and then get okay at it, as opposed to being really good at something and just staying good at it.

Here’s the thing…natural talent is pretty irrelevant when compared to a lot of other factors — grit, drive, determination, and most importantly, loving what you’re doing. It’s one of those “asking the wrong questions” kind of scenarios. Instead of trying to find the thing I was “great” at, I should have been looking for the thing that I loved enough to become great at (or not, in which case, no biggie, cause I love doing it anyway).

I love racing enduro. I love riding my bike fast. I love letting off the brakes on a slippery, rocky section and realizing just how fast I really can go. I love how, after hours and hours of practice, I have done things this year that six months ago I thought I could never do. I also love how everything I have accomplished this year is directly related to how hard I have worked for it. The victories were small, yes, but they were also huge because they were all mine.

I didn’t exactly trample my competition this season. I hardly had that break-out-stellar-prodigy-superstar season that I always expected I would have if I ever managed to find that thing that I was made to do. More accurately, I held onto the rear-end of the pro women’s field by the very tips of my fingernails. I scrabbled. I crashed. And yeah, I lost. Pretty frequently. But a lot of important things happened — I learned a lot. I had fun. I was actually disappointed for the race season to be over. And I think maybe, against all odds, I found my thing.

Inca Avalanche (Or, That One Time I Barfed on Ancient Ruins)

Posted on May 9, 2014 by Syd Schulz

Here’s the thing about traveling — sometimes things go wrong.

And here’s the thing about traveling as a mountain biker — you are doing something relatively dangerous and strenuous and you are hauling around extremely expensive equipment so when things do go wrong, it tends to be catastrophic. Continue reading →