text: import React from 'react'
  
  export const MEMBER_BIOS = {
    david: {
      bio: (
        <div>
          <strong style={{ fontSize: "var(--mLgFontSize)" }}>
            Hi, I’m David.
          </strong>
          <p>
            <strong style={{ fontSize: "var(--mFontSize)" }}>Racing</strong> in
            the U.S. since 2011, and vegan since 2015. I’m super excited about our
            team, being the first and so far only vegan cycling team in the U.S. I
            love our different approach to the whole ‘cycling-team’ aspect with a
            better focus, or more holistic approach to partnerships instead of
            sponsorships. To me ‘holistic’ is a keyword as I think when we’re
            trying to improve our fitness, only a holistic approach makes sense.
            Besides training, one should look at recovery, sleep, mental stress,
            social life and diet as well, as in my opinion, these are all
            influencing each other. If you want to achieve peak performance they
            are as equally important as the training sessions itself.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            Therefore I adopted a plant-based vegan diet in 2015. Even before, I
            was never a big meat-eater, but did notice that when stage-racing, a
            vegan diet helped me recover faster. I felt better and fresher the
            next day than when eating meat. Why did I not switch to a fully vegan
            diet earlier? I had the same concern many people have: I would not get
            enough protein.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            I was not a stereotypical male who had to eat steak because it’s soo
            delicious, and to prove my masculinity – far from it. I don’t think a
            guy is serious when he claims how good the steak was, especially when
            followed up with a scotch and a cigar… ;) But I can’t deny that I was
            probably also brainwashed to believe protein is key to athletic
            success.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            What made me change? Rich Roll’s podcast with David Carter (the
            300-pound vegan), and my partner at the time, as we were looking into
            adopting a fully plant-based vegan diet together. I thought, if David
            Carter can maintain 300 pounds on a vegan diet, little David Baar
            shouldn’t have any trouble doing it as a cyclist as well. In addition,
            I believe it was in one of Rich’s podcasts as well, someone posed the
            question “when was the last time you heard of someone in a developed
            country being admitted to hospital with a protein deficiency?”
            implying that probably those not conscious of what they eat, still eat
            plenty of protein. Ergo, I was brainwashed. And once we questioned
            common beliefs, we did more research and soon were convinced veganism
            is the way to go.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            In terms of cycling, my recovery time between training and racing was
            significantly reduced allowing me to train more intensely more
            frequently. My favorite terrain are mountains, even though I’m not a
            mountain goat like James. In races, I also like to go for the ‘stupid’
            moves – it’s more fun, even though the reward is mostly a ‘getting
            dropped on lap x’. Like for many of us, 2020 has been a rollercoaster
            for me as well. One of the ‘ups’ was certainly getting into MTBiking
            over the summer, and I am super excited to try out XC and marathon
            racing in 2021. It seems like a completely different world which is
            fun to explore and learn! Btw, any vegan MTBikers out there?
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            My favorite vegan dish is a raw Thai coleslaw recipe. I typically add
            either lentils, or beans, or even Tempeh, plus baked sweet potatoes. I
            know it won’t be a raw dish anymore, but it’s delicious and provides
            you with everything after a hard training ride. Otherwise Taylor is a
            fantastic cook, no matter what he cooks. Team meetings at his place
            are always a guarantee for delicious food. Oh yeah, and home-made rice
            cakes for bike rides, can’t get any better than that!
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            Anyway, going back to the excitement about the team – I can’t wait to
            see how our team develops in 2021 and beyond! Some exciting things are
            in the works!
          </p>
          <br />
          <em>Kette rechts and Vollgas,</em>
          <br />
          <strong>David</strong>
        </div>
      ),
    },
    taylor: {
      bio: (
        <article>
          <p>
            <strong>Breakfast: </strong>
            <em>Four eggs, cheese, and bacon breakfast burrito.</em>
            <br />
            <strong>Lunch: </strong>
            <em>
              10oz of chicken breast, white rice, and two glasses of whole milk.
            </em>
            <br />
            <strong>Afternoon snack:</strong>
            <em> 8 eggs, scrambled.</em>
            <br />
            <strong>Dinner:</strong>
            <em>16 oz of steak and (maybe) veggies.</em>
            <br />
            <strong>Before bed:</strong>
            <em>whey protein shake with whole milk.</em>
          </p>
          <br />
          <p style={{ margin: 0 }}>
            <strong style={{ fontSize: "var(--mFontSize)" }}>This </strong> would
            be a typical example of “what I eat in a day” throughout my late teens
            and early twenties as an aspiring powerlifter. At 17 years old, I
            became tired of being a 130lb golfer that could barely do a proper
            pull up and became enamored with reading nutrition journals and
            weightlifting magazines. In college, I joined a nutrition research lab
            and became meticulous with counting how many ounces of meat I needed
            to eat in a day to make sure I had the “optimal” amount of protein.
            Over the next 6 years, I gained nearly 55 pounds during my
            powerlifting and olympic weightlifting pursuits. However, after a knee
            injury at age 23, I took up cycling to try and stave off muscle
            atrophy in my lower body. Little did I know I would get hooked and
            cycling became my new fitness pursuit, on the complete opposite end of
            the spectrum of weightlifting.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            After several years of cycling and still believing I needed a large
            amount of protein - from meat - to recover, I finally started to open
            my mind after seeing several cycling teammates perform and recover on
            a vegan diet. As I started looking into the research and watching a
            few documentaries, I began to start asking myself questions:
            <br />
            <ul>
              <li>
                Would it be possible for me to recover better and feel lighter on
                the bike?
              </li>
              <li>
                How could I justify my “need” for animal products over the
                negative impacts animal agriculture has on the environment?
              </li>
              <li>
                How long could I really ignore the atrocities of factory farming,
                including the impact on communities living near factory farms?
              </li>
              <li>
                Should I really be eating eggs, steak, and bacon when my father
                and both grandfathers had heart attacks?
              </li>
            </ul>
          </p>
          <p>
            I decided that I really did not have any reason to continue my
            previous lifestyle of excess and indulgent consumption of animal
            products and cut out all animal products immediately. After 3 years of
            a vegan diet, I have often had others ask: “do you ever see yourself
            going back to a non-vegan diet?”. Not only is the answer “no”, but I
            don’t see any reason why I would go back. I feel better than I ever
            have and my blood markers indicate I am healthier and at lower risk of
            heart disease than in the past. I am considerably faster on the bike,
            have made the biggest improvements in my fitness after going vegan,
            and I recover quicker from hard training days than I used to. I feel
            like I am living in alignment with my values of compassion for others
            and care for the environment.
          </p>
          <br />
          <p>
            Every day I look forward to trying to make an impact with my decisions
            as I believe the future depends on people living a life that is
            compassionate towards others and minimizing the impact on the world we
            live in. In the meantime, I will be enjoying riding my bike fast,
            powered by plants!
          </p>
          <br />
          <strong>- Taylor Dawson</strong>
        </article>
      ),
    },
    nick: {
      bio: (
        <article>
          <p>“I took a nap and when I woke up, Nick was vegan.”</p>
          <p>
            This is how my wife tells our friends that ask about when I made the
            move to a fully plant based diet. I’m a 35 year old male living in Los
            Angeles. In October 2019, while my wife was napping, I watched a
            documentary on Netflix, Game Changers, and have been plant based
            since. What this documentary did for me was dispel the myth that to be
            a great athlete you need to eat animal protein and presented an
            alternate reality to consider; that being plant based would actually
            make me a better athlete than if I was eating animals. I was willing
            to try and cut out all animal based products immediately.
          </p>
          <p>
            I have been an athlete my entire life. I was the US National Champion
            at Tetrathlon (Modern Pentathlon without fencing) when I was 12,
            played Division 1 and professional Lacrosse as well as many other
            team, individual, and mountain sports. While I still play lacrosse
            recreationally, I was riding my bikes 100-300 miles per week as my
            primary sport. I was eating a lot of food to fuel these rides and
            activities. I became really focused on how to best fuel and recover,
            but being plant based was not something I even considered. When I
            tried being plant based, Strava and TrainingPeaks made it immediately
            clear that this lifestyle was right for me - I had personal records on
            everything across the board. However, it was hard to figure out what
            to eat at first and it took a lot of research and trial and error to
            find the best food for fuel. There are so many good resources now -
            Rich Roll and Matt Frazier are two of my favorites. They can both help
            with the ins and outs of supplementation and being a plant based
            athlete - B12 is a must.
          </p>
          <p>
            Becoming plant based is one part of my journey to live with intention
            and purpose as an athlete and a human. I want to be aware of how my
            actions affect me and my immediate and extended surroundings. The
            effect on me as an athlete is clear, but I’ve become much more aware
            of the effect the livestock industry has on the planet - it’s not
            sustainable. It’s also difficult to ignore the conditions animals
            endure during their short existences that are for the sole purpose of
            pleasing the human palate. Beyond these two ideas, there is a growing
            body of evidence that consuming animals, particularly in the
            quantities typical to a diet in the United States, is highly
            correlated to many diseases and ailments. If you are struggling with
            your health or looking to improve your athletic performance, try it. I
            don’t push being vegan on anyone and feel that everyone needs to find
            their own path and motivations. However, I’m grateful that I feel able
            to be the best I can be as an athlete and a force for good with my
            actions and consumer choices for the planet and the lives of the other
            creatures we share it with.
          </p>
          <em>Ride on!</em>
          <br />
          <br />
          <strong>Nick Smith</strong>
        </article>
      ),
    },
    oscar: {
      bio: (
        <article>
          <strong style={{ fontSize: "var(--mFontSize)" }}>
            Hi, my name is Oscar.
          </strong>
          <br />
          <br />
          <p>
            I’ve been riding bikes since 2008. First commuting out of necessity,
            but eventually for fun once I found friends to ride with and
            discovered the joys and health benefits of cycling. My journey into a
            plant-based lifestyle also began around that time.
          </p>
          <p>
            I was born in Mexico and grew up in So-Cal, where I've spent most of
            my life. I’m currently residing in Redlands, CA and love it here! Lots
            of hills and endless scenery. I also work in the cycling industry as a
            copywriter for an online retailer of bikes.
          </p>
          <p>
            As far as goals in cycling: I just want to have fun on the bike and
            attack the homies when they drop their guard. <span role="img" aria-label="wink and a smile">😉</span>
          </p>
          <strong>- Oscar Ochoa</strong>
        </article>
      ),
    },
    james: {
      bio: (
        <article>
          <strong>
            Hi, I'm James, and I got into cycling as a sport because I’m hopelessly
            competitive.
          </strong>
          <br />
          <p>
            My highschool friend Taylor (who is now my teammate) got a road bike
            and told me that he rode it from one side of town to the other in
            about 20 minutes - my first thought was, “That’s wild! I wonder if I
            could do it faster...” From there we shared a rivalry that sank us
            both deeper into the sport, especially when Strava got big. We fought
            over all the KOMs in our area, and when we eventually both moved to
            LA, we trained tirelessly just to try to get on the leaderboards. That
            eventually led us to group rides, which then led to racing, which we
            both seemed to be pretty decent at.
          </p>
          <p>
            We raced a long time as an unattached duo, and got some good results
            along the way, but we eventually decided it was time to get ourselves
            on a team; if for no other reason than to see what it was like racing
            with real team tactics. We joined team PBS (Portland Bicycle Studio)
            where we met Herr David Baar, our current captain and all around good
            egg. We raced for PBS for about a season, after which the team sponsor
            dropped out. But we’d had a great time, and towards the end of that
            season, I mentioned to David that I was considering going vegan, at
            which point he told me that he had been vegan for several years; we
            talked about it for hours, as I was hungry for stories about the
            subject. Veganism was a source of heated conversation amongst my
            friends, a vocal minority of which had been vegan for a couple of
            years as well. As a result of these recurring debates, I was already
            of the mind that a vegan diet was the more ethical way to live, but
            that still didn’t seem to be enough for me to make the switch.
          </p>
          <p>
            I hate to admit it, but if I’m honest my tipping point was just
            selfish curiosity about how it might benefit my health and performance
            on the road. Very fortunately for me, I had the guidance and support
            of my already vegan housemate (also highschool friend, and current
            teammate) Josh, as well as David’s advice as an experienced vegan
            endurance athlete. As a result of their wisdom, I avoided many of the
            pitfalls a lot of new vegans fall into, and the results on the bike
            were obvious. I was lighter, I was snappier, and had better recovery.
            If those perceived differences weren’t enough, my power numbers and
            results spoke for themselves. I had a higher threshold power than
            ever, even with the weight loss, and I won more that season than I
            ever had prior.
          </p>
          <p>
            The PBS team folded right around the time I started going vegan,
            followed shortly by Taylor who I mentioned at the top. Though we were
            once again without a team, we of course still wanted to race together.
            Since at that point we had all gone vegan, David called us up and
            suggested the idea that we form a vegan racing team; it was a no
            brainer as soon as he said it out loud. We immediately started talking
            about how we’d do it. It was David’s idea that we would get
            ​partnerships r​ather than sponsorships so that instead of just
            getting money from some local business, we could champion the causes
            that we thought were worth supporting. Vegan Athletic was the first
            that came to mind since they were already a company we admired, but
            after that, we had to consider what kind of causes we all wanted to
            support. What was our mission as a team going to be? That question
            prompted us all to reconsider our reasons for going/being vegan. I
            like to think that all vegans have their own little pie chart of
            reasons for being such.
          </p>
          <p>
            For me it began with wanting to be healthier and faster, and as I
            learned, the sections of my chart representing environmentalism and
            then indignation against the practices of animal agriculture grew in
            proportion. But another reason started to take precedence for me
            during this process of consideration. If going vegan helped me -an
            already quite health conscious athlete- to feel better and be
            healthier in so many ways, what could it do for the people I knew that
            weren’t so healthy? I thought of my family and the difficulty they and
            others in the black community were having with obesity, heart disease,
            and diabetes, and how these things were so obviously (and provably)
            perpetuated and compounded by poor diet. I thought that if this kind
            of change in lifestyle could help me feel better, for them it would be
            a revolution.
          </p>
          <p>
            But when I considered how I would actually go about getting through to
            those people, I realized there were a number of factors forming a kind
            of barrier to entry for them. First, where they lived there certainly
            wouldn’t be a Wholefoods anywhere nearby, and even if there was, they
            wouldn’t be spending $10 on a 2 pack of beyond meat burgers when the
            animal equivalent was a quarter of that cost. Of course, someone could
            go vegan without those kinds of meat replacement options, but not
            without going through a bit of a learning curve to do so. But before
            they even approach that step, there are the countless misconceptions
            about meat and dairy, and the comparative sufficiency of a plant-based
            diet that would have to be overcome. I started to consider how these
            misconceptions have been perpetuated by the food industry, whose
            interests lie in the continued sale of their cheapest (and
            incidentally least healthy) products.
          </p>
          <p>
            Long story short, I started to notice how the confluence of these
            factors worked to prevent a huge number of people -especially in the
            poorer communities that I knew- from living healthier lives. And there
            it was - I found the issue that really clicked for me. I wasn’t sure
            just how a bike racing team out of Santa Monica would help solve these
            problems, but I thought I could at least start by making myself proof
            positive that people don’t need animal products to have energy or
            strong bones or whatever else. Then maybe with time, the team could
            build enough of a presence to bring significant attention to
            organizations who were helping address the issues with access to
            healthier foods, or with the lack of education about diet. I know the
            other members of the team have their own vegan pie charts, and I fully
            support their chosen causes. As tightly knit as we are, we’re still a
            coalition of people with different backgrounds and motivations - but
            hopefully we can leverage that diversity to make some waves.
          </p>
          <p>
            Anyway, that’s how I started out just wanting to beat my friend up a
            hill, and ended up aspiring to become a vegan activist. The issues
            plaguing the world right now may have conspired to thwart those
            aspirations, but when bike racing is a thing again and people actually
            have time to worry about their habits instead of just surviving, we
            can get back to the task(s) at hand.
          </p>
          <em>With Respect.</em>
          <br/>
          <br/>
          <strong>James Walker</strong>
        </article>
      ),
    },
  }