A day in the life.

 

A Day In The Life (of a part-time pro).

(Me at a local training race in No CO)

In the late 90’s and early 00’s, northern Colorado was a hotbed of American cycling talent.

Between the good weather, great lifestyle, excellent riding, and proximity to a major

international airport, it was home to a bevy of big name pros. Our local group rides were a

who’s who of American bike racing. And local races were just nuts.

A bonus was that our little local training group had some real firepower in it. It was not unusual

to find riders from Saturn or US Postal to train with. I counted some of these guys among my

friends.

In those days I was trying to “make it” as a Pro in cycling. I was burning through the last of my

college money training and racing full time in lieu of getting an actual job. I was logging 20-30

hour training weeks. And resting as hard as I was training.

At the time I lived with my girlfriend. She was an age grouper triathlete and would get up at

5.30a and go to her masters swim practice, then go to her 9-5 job as a civil engineer. Sometimes

she’d go for a run on her lunch break, or go for a ride when she got home from work.

Invariably she’d get home from work to find me lying on the couch or sitting on the floor

stretching. It drove her nuts! She didn’t see the 5 and 6 hour rides with hill repeats or sprints or

whatever the day held on tap.

It really was like running my own little business. The team often, but not always, dictated what

races I went to. Sometimes I picked races I wanted to go to across the US that I thought were

interesting and important.

The upshot of all the local talent was that many of these guys were my friends. And, as such we

often trained together. And the bar was high in terms of being able to keep up even during

training.

A typical day would look like this:

Wake at 7 or 8am.

8am - Eat breakfast and look at training for the day. Reach out to other riders to find out when

they’re riding and what they’re doing.

8-10am – answer e-mails to race promoters and sponsors or the team. Make any phone calls

and or plane, hotel reservations needed.

10am – on the bike for anywhere between 2 and 5 hours.

2 or 3pm – arrive home from ride. Protein shake immediately off the bike. Then on the floor

stretching. Then shower. Then 30min or so later eat lunch.

3:30pm to 4:30pm – nap. In those days it was popular to nap after training as a recent research

paper had touted the production of testosterone and Human Growth Hormone while we sleep.

My peers and I all tried to capitalize on this.

4:30-6pm. Rest, do any bike maintenance or run any errands.

6:30pm – dinner with my girlfriend at the time and/or any friends we wanted to meet with.

8:30-9pm – bed time.

And then get up and do it again the next day.

This scheduled usually changed dramatically when racing started as I’d spent most of my time

between races resting and recovering and traveling.

Hope you enjoyed this glimpse!