Meet Coach Rusty
December 5th, 2011
If you’ve ridden with us this season, chances are you’ve encountered the friendly, knowledgeable guy with the impressive moustache and the highly contagious love of cycling. In case you didn’t know, his name is Rusty Miller, and we are incredibly pleased to announce that he is serving as Duke Cycling’s Head Coach for the 2011-12 season.
Back in May, our own Chris Oishi, impresario of the renown Tuesday Night Street Fight Series, recounted the legend of Rusty as follows:
Chapter IX: The Phantom Mustache
Last week saw the return of a shadowy figure of the Durham cycling scene: Rusty.
Rusty first emerged on a fabled Tuesday night many moons ago on some clunky
hybrid bike and flat pedals and put the hammer down on some unsuspecting folks.
As those folks later learned, he raced professionally in Europe and the US…
Six months later, with his brand new coaching career dovetailing with the exciting racing season in front of us, we thought it was high time to officially coax him out of the shadows.
Meet Coach Rusty…
About Rusty, or: Who the Hell is this Guy?
When I was fourteen years old I spent one summer’s lawn-mowing income on a $300 road bike and began a love affair with bicycling. At first there was the independence to get myself across town without a driver’s license. Then it was the pride of knowing that I rode thirty miles out in the countryside one evening. Then I discovered the cycling club in my hometown and began to do group rides and some unsanctioned races. A year later I entered my first official race (Category IV was then the beginners’ class) and I won it in front of 70 other racers. At 17 I competed in pro/am races as a Category II and rubbed elbows with guys who had finished the Tour de France. I was smitten with bike racing, from the camaraderie of speeding along in group-ride pacelines, to the planning and anticipation of packing into vehicles every weekend and sleeping on floors in cheap hotel rooms, to the incomparable thrill of crossing a finish line with two arms in the air.
In the early 1990s there really was no such thing as a cycling coach, so I read every book written in English on training and racing. I tried it all, and held onto the things that worked. The summer before starting college I won the NC/SC state championship for all ages, finished 6th in the national road race for boys under 18, and spent a week at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado. I traveled across the country with other teenagers, unchaperoned and in the days before cell phones and GPS, earning prize money to feed myself and make the next event. Sport provided an uncommon early education.
While majoring in Psychology at Furman University I raced one season as the sole member of our cycling team. I won the individual championship for the Southeastern Cycling Conference before there was a Division II for smaller schools. Georgia and Florida were the powerhouse squads, and I learned to pit their rivalries against each another to win more than half the races that year. Competing also in non-collegiate events, I won the South Carolina state time trial, road race, and criterium titles in the same year.
After finishing college I spent a year living out of a Honda Civic and struggling to race National Calendar events without team support. Enduring the hardship paid off with a spot on the Zaxby’s professional team for 2000 and 2001. I represented my country at the Tour of Serbia and in the Tour of Tibet. And I established a place in the American professional peloton, taking wins in both seasons and finishing in the top quarter of the field at the US Professional Championships for both the road race and the criterium.
My genetic gifts were not outstanding. A VO2max measured at 67 ml/min/kg predicted that I might have won some races but not at the professional level. I found some success in bicycle racing by training intelligently to correct my weaknesses and by racing intelligently to capitalize on my strengths. Results in cycling can only come by a combination of smart training and smart racing, and I think that some coaches have a nearsighted focus on training. A race title is not awarded on the start line to the athlete who has trained the hardest; the winner is the one who finds the way to put a tire across the finish line first.
Q&A with Coach Rusty
Coaching philosophy in a nutshell?
Build the engine; teach the driver.
What aspect of coaching do you enjoy the most?
When someone has worked hard for many weeks with an event in mind, and I get that phone call late on a Saturday afternoon from an athlete who has just completed a breakthrough ride.
Any pre-race rituals/superstitions?
In the olden days before wicking undershirts, I wore the same Fender t-shirt (cotton, with sleeves cut off) underneath my jersey at every race.
Most memorable racing experience?
Finishing the final stage of the Tour of Tibet in front of the Dalai Lama’s palace in Lhasa, elevation 11,450 feet.
Most rewarding experience setting someone else up for a win? (shelling guys off on a climb, chasing down a break, sacrificial attack, leading out a sprint, etc..)
In a juniors criterium in Tennessee, my teammate was in a two-man break with a rider who was stronger than either of us. At 5 laps to go our manager screamed at me that I had to jump away from the field by myself, which seemed dumb since I wanted to try to win the field sprint. Once I broke away from the field, though, it all made sense; with me bridging up to the leading duo, my teammate was entitled to sit behind the other rider and make him do all the work. If the other guy didn’t ride hard, I would catch them both and we would have him outnumbered; if he did ride hard, my teammate would be fresh enough to beat him at the line. In the end I almost caught them, and the other rider was so exhausted doing all of the work that my teammate easily took the win. That was the moment I fell in love with the tactics of bicycle racing.
Favorite cyclist?
It’s hard not to like Thomas Voeckler. He digs deep and isn’t afraid to risk it all.
If you could go pro in any sport other than cycling, what would it be?
Table tennis.
How long have you had the ‘stache?
I tend to grow a beard every fall and shave it in the spring. In March ’11 I began clipping that winter’s beard and figured I’d pull a bit of a stunt by leaving a mustache. Then, so to speak, it grew on me.
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Congratulations to Patrick Hunnicutt and Alex Pfiffner for competing at the NCSU mtb race! Here’s Patrick’s recap: