A love letter to indoor cycling

Posted on by Lindsay
When the air is warm and the sun shines bright on dry roads, cycling is a privilege and a pleasure, no matter how hard the ride. You clip in, savor the breeze on your bare skin, and feel positively blessed. Bikes are the best! Life is great! Winter evokes none of these feelings. Winter is a slap across the face with a cold, dead fish. There are a few lucky cyclists who live in climates that never turn against them. This article is not for those riders (instead please enjoy a friendly middle finger). This article is for everybody else who has ever had to spend twenty minutes bundling up just to venture out for a quick spin. Whatever hemisphere you call home, chances are good you've had a ride plan impacted or derailed entirely by weather that would put off the most intrepid athletes. I'm from Northern Virginia, and never does ...continue reading.

Peloton Magazine: Unvarnished Tales of a Pro Cyclist – February 2017

Posted on by Lindsay
It's official. I've reached the low point of winter training, the nadir of the year, an occasion so bleak my own mother opened an upstairs window to mock me: I am riding the trainer outside on the deck. This is what happens when you are a professional cyclist but also a team owner and a Business Development/Proposal Manager for an IT company. My training schedule can't stop just because I have a long to-do list, but my to-do list (and my employer) doesn't give a shit that I need to ride. It's a halfway decent day outside and since I'm grasping to hang onto the final shreds of sanity, I figured the least I could do is ride in the sun. On the deck. While fielding work emails. In the last nine weeks, I have ridden indoors for a total of 70.2 hours. That is nearly three days, the same ...continue reading.

Turns out there is more silver lining than cloud

Posted on by Lindsay
For my birthday last October, my dear friend Ivy gave me a necklace: It was more than just a piece of jewelry; it was a reminder and a life philosophy. Get shit done. Keep going. Don't let anything stop you. There was a moment last November when I almost forgot that. Everything felt broken and insurmountable. I sat alone in my apartment in Seattle and wept at the mess I'd made of my life. In that instant, I couldn't figure out how to begin untangling the wreckage of an entirely derailed life plan. But then I got up off the couch and did. One step at a time, one day at a time, with the help of my tirelessly loving family and friends. I got shit done. Now it's time for the next step. I just left home to go on the road for the season. I often write something here ...continue reading.

Peloton Magazine: Unvarnished Tales of a Pro Cyclist – January 2017

Posted on by Lindsay
I was at a Rapha Cycle Club a few months back listening to a question-and-answer session with a cycling photographer when somebody in the audience asked, "Why do all of the photos try to make cycling look so epic? That's not realistic. A lot of rides are actually sort of boring and ordinary." Of course I laughed, because the guy put into words perfectly what we all already know: most of cycling isn't epic or breathtaking. You don't roll out every weekend to summit a peak in the Pyrenees or cross every finish line gutted, crusted in mud and ice. Cycling for 99% of us is fun and challenging, but looks nothing like what Rapha and the like are selling. Right now as I type this, I'm literally pedaling on a trainer in a freezing garage next to my mother’s car. This is neither sexy nor epic. This is the ...continue reading.

On exiting 2016 like a bat out of hell

Posted on by Lindsay
What a year! I will forever look back on 2016 as the year that overflowed with joyful moments like slamming into the ground repeatedly, getting my heart pulverized, and finding out we'd elected Trump. What a time to be alive! And yet, in the wake of a year of sometimes crippling defeats, I have never felt more alive, excited, and ready to plunge ahead. So many things happened in the last 12 months. We launched Hagens Berman | Supermint and had an incredible season of highs and lows, victories and learning experiences, and a roller coaster of thrills that took the team all over North America and to Italy for the Giro Rosa. (Meanwhile, I went to Canada. So that's basically my 2016 life choices in a nutshell.) It still feels surreal, yet we're now well underway towards our second season. In my own cycling career, I raced hard, crashed harder, stubbornly kept ...continue reading.

Somehow I ended up in a cross race

Posted on by Lindsay
You know those nights when you go to bed and nothing happens? You lay there and lay there and eventually start to grow moss but sleep doesn't come. That was me on Saturday night. After several hours of chewing my pillow in exasperation, I resorted to reading until sleep finally came. When my alarm went off at 6am so I could volunteer at the Capital Cross Classic, I had been asleep for less than four hours and woke up ready to punch somebody in the face. My beloved 14-year-old dog was the my first interaction of the day. Okay. No punching. So I got up feeling exhausted and cranky, put on fifteen layers of clothing (how many pairs of leggings equals one pair of actual pants?), and headed to the race. I began my volunteer duties, caught up with friends I hadn't seen in months, and was bordering on hypothermic ...continue reading.