Ian: When did you first start riding bikes?

Laurel: I started in 2020 during COVID. I was a rower in high school and college, and when it sort of all got shut down I really wanted to keep working out. All the gyms were closed, I tried to get into running — which I still really like to do — but I got injured. So I bought a bike off Craigslist. I was living in New York at the time, so I just did loops and loops of Central Park. It's a really good way to meet people. There are tons of races in Central Park throughout the summer too, so it just spiraled from there, you know, upgrading the bike, getting more and more into it.

Did you start with a road bike?

Yeah, I started on a Trek bike from 1989 with the shifters on the down tube, flat pedals, super retro. I would go on these group rides and people would be like, "What is she doing?" But yeah, I started on the road and have recently switched more to gravel and mountain biking.

Where did you row? What school?

I went to Columbia, and then rowed on Lake Merced here in San Francisco in high school.

Oh wow, very cool. There's definitely a lot of crossover fitness between rowing and cycling.

For sure. Rowing is really hard to keep up after college because you need so much infrastructure, and ideally more people. I know so many rowers who have gotten into biking after.

When did you get serious about riding? It sounds like it was pretty quick.

Yeah, definitely pretty quick. I remember going on my first long weekend ride with a group and calling my mom afterward like, "I can’t keep biking because I can't be spending all my weekends going on five-hour rides." I was still in school at the time and felt like I just didn't have the time to be doing this. And then I just never followed through on that. So yeah, I got serious pretty quickly. But I've always cared about athletics, so I think with any sport I do, I'm going to do it seriously.

Do you feel like it's… if you’re not getting stronger what’s the point? Or do you just want to win? Or do you just like the structure of it? What compels you to do it seriously?

I love being outside. I want to get outside every day and I don't really care about the mode of how that happens. I've really struggled with defining what motivates me in the past. I still don’t really know. I'm competitive, but most of the races I'm doing I'm not winning, so it's like, why do I keep doing them? I think I really like pushing myself, I really like being outside, and feeling challenged. That's the driving factor. And I just like exercise in general — that's the underlying thing.

It's hard to find out how far you can go unless there are other people pushing you.

Exactly.

So what does "serious" mean to you?

For me, right now, I think that kind of goes back to what I was saying about motivation. I don't really know what motivates me, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I know I'm going to want to ride my bike. But in terms of seriousness, I've never not been serious about sports. So for me, taking biking seriously actually means trying to separate my self-worth from it a little bit — taking it maybe a touch less seriously, making a conscious decision to know that I'm putting in everything I can into biking while also working a job and living a life that isn't constricted by biking. Letting biking open the world up rather than close it in. I know I'm going to take it seriously and I know I'm going to care — so how do I do that and still be a productive human? How do I balance it all and acknowledge that I care a lot and do take it seriously?

It almost sounds like you need to put a container around it.

And I think I just need to be aware of how it might be putting a container on me and I think that awareness goes a long way. Maybe I don't want to put a container on it all the time, maybe it’s good in the off season. But right now I'm ramping up into the season with all these big races, this is a time when maybe I don't want to hold back — but just being aware that this is something I take seriously and that can take over everything, and I have let that happen before, so just staying aware of that.

In what ways does road biking, or gravel biking, or any biking — impact your life?

I think it's the driving force of my life. My day is structured around it, my vacations are structured around it, almost all my travel is to and from races. What I eat is structured around it. So, basically everything is structured around it. So, yes, very impactful.

Have you ever felt like it's negatively impacted your life?

Yeah, sometimes I get too into it or put too much of my self-worth into it. The whole biking world has a lot of layers to it, and sometimes letting those external layers — the stuff that isn't just me enjoying riding my bike — get to me and affects my ability to enjoy it. That can be a negative. Because I care a lot, it impacts the rest of my life as well. Like, if I'm letting team directors get in my head and make me not want to ride my bike, then I'm unhappy when I’m riding my bike and unhappy the rest of the day. But I don't think the act of riding itself has ever been negative — other than crashing.

Crashing is no fun.

Yeah.

Net, do you think biking is positive or negative?

Definitely positive.

Do you have any goals for yourself in regards to biking?

Last year was my first year doing any sort of off-road racing, and I really like it. I felt like no matter how the race turns out, it is a valuable experience. You're still racing 100-plus miles whether or not you’re first or last. I really want to build on that this year and into next year. I also want to appreciate what these races, and training for these races, actually does for me. It gives me an outlet to push myself and see where my limits are, regardless of whether I'm competitive in a given race. That was something I took a while to come around to last year. I had no mountain biking experience, and these mountain bike races were difficult in a way I'd never experienced before. So, getting value from all these new experiences... I think that's what I really want to focus on this year: appreciating all the opportunities that biking gives me.

What are some things you absolutely love about cycling?

I love pushing myself, and I love being outside, so it's a good combo for that. I love improving. And I bike in the morning a lot — I love seeing the sunrise every day.

It's a good time of day. If you had zero constraints on your time, how many hours a week do you think you would ride?

Right now I ride 15 to 25 depending on the training and what phase of the season I'm in. The thing I would optimize more if I had more time would be sleep. That's the limiting factor right now. I'm optimizing the ride time, but maybe not the sleep.

It's so hard to say "I'm not going to ride so I can sleep!"

Yeah. Exactly.

What is something you wish a non-cyclist could experience about cycling?

The thing that really got me into cycling, the think that made me think "oh, this is crazy" was PRing on a climb for the first time — just having that feeling of being better than I was two weeks ago. Seeing how your work is paying off. You can get that in other things, but it's just different on a bike. It’s even different from rowing, where all our tests and metrics were indoors. On a bike you're outside, you can optimize for conditions, there are so many variables. But I love that feeling of measurable improvement.

Do you feel like you're data-driven, or not? On an erg machine it's all data, and cycling is very data-reliant too, with zones, watts, heart rate. But you also said that being outside and your actual time up a climb is really important. How does data factor into your experience?

Maybe it comes in too much, honestly — which might not line up with what I just said, but I studied math in college, I love data, and I love that part of cycling as well. I love diving into TrainingPeaks after a ride or a race and figuring out what happened. I think It's a great tool for benchmarking yourself and putting some facts behind what you were feeling during a race, so I love it.

There are a lot of engineers and math wonks who get into cycling, for sure.

Yeah. For sure.

Have you ever taken a total break from cycling, and if so, why?

I take an off season every year, depending on the year and how it’s gone it can be anywhere from one to four weeks. Four weeks is probably the most I’ve taken off, just after a season of racing.

How did you experience that?

It always kind of goes the same way. The first few days I'm like, "okay, this is good, I needed this." And then by the end I'm so antsy. Normally how my off-seasons will go is I'll do one or two weeks of nothing and then throw in some runs and lifts. I get so antsy to bike, but I love running too, so it's kind of nice to just run for a bit.

I find it kind of alarming how fast your body adapts to not riding, just like it adapts to riding.

It is crazy. That first week back you're so excited, but your body is like, "whoa, relax! This is not what we’re supposed to be doing!”

“I thought we were done with this!”

Exactly.

Can you choose three words to describe yourself as a cyclist?

Hmm… I would say: Stubborn. Happy. And determined.