Streamers
Greetings! I’m one of the Nature Valley Pro Ride riders, and I have loved riding bikes for almost as long as I can remember. My first bike was sea-green with streamers. I remember my dad running up and down the street with me on that bike until I found my own wings. My mom likes to tell the story of how she can’t believe she let me ride by myself to my friend’s house, a whole 0.7 miles away, when I was just 5.

High School, College and Independence
By the time I was in high school, I was riding everywhere around my hometown of Titusville, FL. I would ride 7 miles each way to high school, 15 to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge or the Canaveral National Seashore beyond, within spitting distance of where shuttles landed and launched. These experiences constituted the launching point of my lifelong passion for cycling.

In high school, carless, cycling was my independence. Still carless in college in St. Louis, it also became my means to get groceries and other necessities (or non-necessities, including a small Christmas tree I rode home with senior year to surprise my now husband). College was also when I bought my first road bike, a gently used, royal blue Specialized Allez with a triple chain ring that I still keep around today as a trainer bike or backup bike for when friends come to visit.

Road biking was not my first love, though. I had earlier flirtations with swimming, which I was very serious about growing up, then running, which I was never very good at, and then triathlon. I discovered mountain biking largely by accident in high school and immediately thought it was the most exhilarating sport in the world. I had applied for an Outside magazine adventure grant with some friends and ended up getting the runner-up prize – entry to a multisport adventure race in south Florida. The race involved mountain biking, so to prepare, I ventured to some local trails with my partners in crime. I just remember laughing so hard when one of my friends had an amusing mishap with a tree that I almost peed my pants.

I Can Race My Bike?
Despite loving it, it never crossed my mind to compete in cycling, mainly because I didn’t know anyone who did so and didn’t realize it was a possibility. I would stumble down that slippery slope much
later, after I had completed my Ph.D at the University of Colorado and moved to the Washington, DC area. Immediately after defending my dissertation, I had surgery for scoliosis, which involved bolting an 18-inch steel rod to my spine and removing parts of some ribs. Unable to run right away and lacking access to a cheap swimming pool, I focused on cycling during my recovery. I bought a commuter bike and began riding the 20-mile round trip to work rain or shine.

One thing led to another, and soon I had decided that my husband and I were going to compete in the Mountain Mama century, a beautiful, grueling course traversing the border between Virginia and West Virginia. Having completed that and loving the whole process, we decided to just “try” a road race, and then a time trial. Soon we joined a local team and decided to “try” cyclocross. By then, we were hooked, and the following year, I raced road and cross whenever I was home and a race was happening.

So, that’s how I got into this magnificent sport. In future posts, I’ll describe what motivates me to keep at it, what my goals are, and how I attempt to balance my “play career” with my actual career and
personal relationships.

qualifiers   Tags: Laurel Larsen, Nature Valley Grand Prix, Nature Valley Pro Ride,   Comments Off