Cycling for Women: A Note from Connie

In this Article, you’ll find information on these topics plus other essential information. It’s all geared to women who are relatively new to cycling and still learning the sport, helping smooth their way to many years of fun and fitness.

A Note from Connie

Connie Carpenter is arguably the greatest woman cyclist in U.S. history. After scores of victories, she rode her final race in 1984–and what a farewell it was as she won the first-ever Olympic road race for women. Now married to ex-pro Davis Phinney, they are raising their family in Boulder, Colorado, and operating the Carpenter/Phinney Cycling Camps. Here, Connie tells us why she believes that cycling is a perfect sport for women.

One summer at our Carpenter/Phinney Women’s Bike Camp, I saw that cycling can transform your life. On the first night, as we sat in a circle and talked about why we were at camp, one uncertain person said it was only because someone else had made her come. That someone, sitting across the circle, winced. We all laughed.

As the week progressed, this woman found that despite her initial fears, she could keep up, she could ride in a paceline, she did fit in. By the end of the week, it was clear that she had accomplished something long-lasting. The power of the cycling experience is just that simple. By meeting the challenge, by riding swiftly and strongly, by letting yourself be buoyed–not bullied–by a group, there is grace and power and joy. This spills over to everything you do, every day.

Cycling has allowed me to distinguish myself. It has enriched my life and empowered me. When I raced, I took riding for granted. But now, as the mother of two children and manager of my own small business, my rides often resemble a carefully planned escape: check weather, call babysitter, get dressed, turn on answering machine. Go!

My bicycle gives me an escape, my body supplies the power, the roads and trails provide the route. Every ride is a gift. A good ride fills me with hope, rekindles my childish sense of adventure, helps me conquer–or at least accept–fear, and lets me check the boundaries of my fitness. No ride is without challenge. Every ride is an adventure.

Meeting that challenge gives me the power and the sustenance not simply to endure but to enjoy, even savor, daily duties. What’s more, almost every time I ride, I learn something new about myself, my environment, or the people I meet and ride with.

As a group, women who ride bikes are extraordinary. Why? Because cycling is a complicated sport, involving maintenance of the bike, the body, and the soul. Women have accomplished extraordinary and often unpublished feats on the bicycle. With due respect to every star racer, consider these two examples.

1. One woman who attended our camp had a pacemaker that limited her ability to extend herself and find her limits, yet she demonstrated enormous talent on her bicycle. After camp, she had a more turbo-charged pacemaker installed, partly because it let her ride harder. The lion in The Wizard of Oz was right–it takes heart to have courage. At age 40, this woman set the standard for being the most inspirational.

2. Thea Phinney is best known as the proud mother of my husband, Davis, a winner of two stages in the Tour de France. But Thea began to ride her own bike regularly. One summer, she set her sights on riding the notoriously difficult l’Alpe d’Huez during a trip to France with a bicycle tour group. Once she conquered the long, steep climb, she learned that at 71, she was the oldest woman on record to have done so.

Women who ride bikes are different. The challenges and accomplishments of every single day may not be recorded, but they will be remembered. Whether you use your bicycle for escape, as a means of increasing your fitness, or to become world class, the bicycle frees you. This is the gift of cycling. Take it. Enjoy it. 

Keeping Up with Him

It pains me greatly to admit I took up cycling to avoid housework. Every Sunday, after hours of tapping his lactic acid reserves with the guys, my husband, Hunter, would roll in, drop his sweaty clothes on the just-cleaned floor, trash the bathroom with a long shower, and destroy the kitchen making a breakfast big enough for 10 men. Then he would beg and barter for a leg massage and fall into a 2-hour nap on clean sheets. One day, I said to myself, “This stinks.”

It occurred to me that if I started cycling, I could avoid Sunday dates with the laundry hamper. And wouldn’t it be cool to eat like that? Was I the only misinformed cretin on the planet who fantasized about romantic sunset rides with a fanatic cyclist?

Knowing that I’ve nursed a pack-a-day habit since age 15, Hunter realized the shape my lungs weren’t in and chuckled whenever I used the words “me” and “bike” together. When he could stand my pestering no longer, he leveled with me: “You’d never be able to keep up with us.” When he saw my face go from hurt to furious, he caved. “Okay. Quit smoking and we’ll buy you a bike.” Lord have mercy on my tar deposits.

We lived on Saint Croix then. The Caribbean island hosts a triathlon known for a 700-foot vertical climb. The first time I clawed my way to the top of it my lungs felt like I’d inhaled butane and sucked a lit match. Hunter said, “Hey, you didn’t vomit!” So much for romantic fantasy.

Many hills later, though no longer coughing up a lung, I still could not keep up with the guys. Sometimes, I just turned around and went home in disgrace. My husband would ride with me only when he was (a) nursing an injury, (b) needing a recovery spin, or (c) paying off a massage barter. I took whatever crumbs I could get.

I eventually got good (“for a woman”), only I had traded the boredom of ironing Hunter’s shirts for the frustration of trying to keep his butt in view. He advised me to ride with women, but Saint Croix’s roads are narrow, winding, and steep–too intimidating for all but the fearless. What few women rode were intrepid mavericks. Short of buying a Harley, I could not foresee how to feed my addiction for flying down long hills with the wind in my face. I came close to retiring.

It was the thought of returning to the Sunday cleaning routine that drove me to subterfuge–like the “tortoise-and-the-hare” ride. Hunter and I would agree on a route, then I would sneak out of the house ahead of him. When he discovered I’d left, he’d race to catch me. He got his power ride, and I pushed hard to lengthen the time till he reeled me in. Before long, sometimes he couldn’t.

Together, we also instituted a short “loop-de-loop” course. Each time our paths would merge, we agreed he would not speed up and I would try to hang with him as long as my short little legs would hold out. Once I dropped, he’d speed up quietly on the next circuit and pinch me.

While these games hardly met the criteria of romance, they helped alleviate some of the frustration that was spoiling cycling for me, and it made us both better cyclists. Then one day, Hunter kept looking behind him and I was right on his wheel, mile after mile, with a huge grin on my face.

Over time, I think Hunter actually began to enjoy riding with his wife. Perhaps cycling together rekindled some of the fun he used to
have before speed and pain became his objectives. My reward for refusing to give up was recapturing the freedom I’d felt as a 3-year-old, zooming down the sidewalk on my first bike. It also gave me back my health.

Now, if I could only get Hunter to iron my shirts. 

After the Fall

If you ride a bike, it will happen to you. It doesn’t matter whether your tires are smooth or knobby, if you ride once a week or every day, or if you ride alone or in groups: It will happen to you. You may even have learned how to do it in a way that keeps the damage to a minimum, secretly believing that as long as you are cautious, you will never be called on to perform the technique.

And then, when you least suspect it, it happens. To you. One minute, you’re enjoying the great outdoors, and the next, your blood is mixed with dirt or asphalt in bicycling’s baptism.

As a writer and teacher of things treadular, I’m often asked to speak on behalf of my gender as to the greatest difference between women and men. Although I usually balk at generalizations that include more than 20 million people, after much contemplation, I think I’ve come up with at least one real answer: crashing.

Most of the differences are so obvious that they become moot. Physical structure and physiological distinctions have been bandied about ad nauseam. “Muscle mass, blah, blah, blah. Fat cells, blah, blah, blah. Pelvic bones, blah, blah, blah.” You want to know what truly divides the sexes? Simple psychology. Women think differently than men. Women are more afraid of crashes.

Before all those hard-core, my-scars-are-bigger-than-his-scars gals start warming up their fax machines and home computers to lambaste this appraisal, let me just add that it’s a question of degrees. Some women are more afraid than others, and some types of crashes frighten us more than others. The fact remains, however, that we seem to think about it more than guys.

How did I arrive at this revelation? Aside from my personal experiences with ultra-sensitivity to Earth’s gravitational pull, it’s based on the questions I’ve heard in my all-women classes and from neophyte female friends. The most popular one is a two-parter: “What about crashing? Does it hurt?” I can’t recall any male acquaintances voicing similar concerns.

In responding to students and comrades alike, I try to sound as chipper as possible while visibly horrifying them with the truth: “Sometimes.”

Still on the fence? Flip your channel to ESPN and watch a downhill mountain bike race. I did this one day in 1996. There was Jimmy Deaton tearing down a mountain wearing his teeny-tiny knee pads better suited to light carpentry. There was Dave Cullinan with his cute little Kevlar knee- and shin-guard cutouts sewn tastefully into his spandex pants below his team jersey. Then I saw (barely) Kim Sonier beneath her layers of body armor. And who was that looking like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all plastic joints and webbed ventilators? Oh, Regina Stiefl.

Yeah, sure, you’re thinking. What about Missy Giove? She’s a woman and she’s not afraid to crash.

Correction: Missy is not afraid of anything.

Please don’t think I’m passing judgment–I’m merely stating an observation. I’ve talked to many women, and been there myself, and the one common theme is our hyperawareness of terra firma and its hold over us, or under us, as the case may be.

But it’s not such a bad thing. After all, realizing your fear holds the key to its resolution. The very nature of our chosen sport is to guide us on a collision course, so to speak, to our own enlightenment and ultimate freedom. Girls and women everywhere are being liberated daily, forced to face their fears by the occasional pratfall into a thorn bush or knee skid on a sidewalk. Why, as you read this, there’s probably a woman examining a new flesh wound somewhere in the world, regarding her torn skin with a mixture of pain and pride.

To this woman, and all of us like her, I say, “Celebrate.” Use the experience, learn from it, and most important, become a better rider because of it. Respect your chosen terrain but try not to fear it. Revel in the knowledge that the next time your biking buddies compare battle scars, you’ll have something to bring to the table. If you scraped a leg, wear shorts. If you banged up an elbow, wear T-shirts. Be proud. It happened, and yet you survived.

But I am a woman. I have to give in to my feminine nature and add: Ride within your abilities, and always wear your helmet.