How to Date a Pro Cyclist: Step One - Get good at FaceTime
Step Two: Get good at making coffee.
Seven hours ago, I greeted my girlfriend at the train station. It’s 10:18pm, and it seems half of the Women’s World Tour has just landed back in Girona after the season's first race. I see Maggie and smile.
Just under five hours later, my alarm goes off. My phone reads 2:50am and there’s a taxi downstairs to take me to the airport. I'm flying to London for 48hrs with one of my sponsors, Rudy Project.
People often ask me if I can feel that the race season is close. I presume they expect me to answer about training hours, race fitness, or travel plans. Instead, my answer is somewhat trivial.
FaceTime, that’s how I know it’s race season.
Professional cyclists spend an ungodly amount of days on the road. There are training camps, media duties, travel days, races and more. When I totted up my 2024 days away, it was around the 190 mark.
Try explaining to your significant other that you’re going to spend over six months a year on the road. Now, imagine that both of you are living the same life, but on contrasting calendars, and mostly on conflicting continents
There are many, many, many hours of FaceTime.
Communication is key. The reason we work so well is because of mutual understanding. We both ‘get it’. We both know what it’s like to be on the road, to be committed to a target, to not want to do X, Y, or Z because we’re tired from training.
November through the end of January is usually when we get to spend the most time together, but choose any date between February and October and it’s 50:50 at best if we’re in the same country, let alone together.
When we are together, it’s the little routines we get into that make me smile, or more I get bullied into bringing her a flat white as she wakes up in bed.
For example, I brought Maggie a coffee in bed two weeks ago and she scolded me. “Oh, it’s not a flat white”, she said disappointingly as I handed her a cup of black coffee I’d just made with an Aeropress. “No, your Majesty, I didn’t want to run the grinder this early and wake up our housemates”. She’s a diva sometimes, I’m telling you.
Our calendar looks something like this for the next few months. Purple means that Maggie is away racing, I’m light blue. Grey means one of us is away from home, pinky/purple is a day we’re both racing, and white are days that it looks like we’ll be in the same place. There’s not much white.
Last year, when Maggie was on a crazy Olympic prep meets road commitment, and I was spending an insane amount of time in Northern America, we were just as likely to see each other for a few days in California, or Vancouver, as we were to spend time in our apartment.
Neither of us are complaining.
When I first met Maggie, she’d just signed with the rapidly collapsing B&B Hotels Team. Then came Zaaf- not that that lasted long - before two years with Roland. Oh, the stories I could write from these teams.
These days, she’s with the American-registered, but Belgian-based, Human Powered Health.
The past week, she has been in Mallorca for her first race block with the team. She finished third on day one, made the day’s break and ‘did her job’ on day two, day three she was technically OTL’d, but her teammate won. Not a bad first week at work.
A happy bike racer is a fast bike racer, and the environment of a team makes a huge difference. Human Powered Health has been a happier change for everyone.
I don’t know where this article was going, I just found it funny that FaceTime was my main indicator that race season was here, and started to write.
Anyway, silly season has very much kicked off. Bar just under two weeks in February, we won’t spend more than four days in a row together until late July or early August.
We have a rule: no matter how short, every day gets a call or FaceTime. It’s a small thing, but when your life is built around airports, race schedules, and conflicting time zones, the little things matter most.
While you’re here…
I’ve added a paid subscription and a ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ link to this post. As the year progresses, I’m planning on building this blog and putting out articles which I’ve always wanted to write but for whatever reason, haven’t wanted to pitch.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/joelaverick
Project TAG, proudly partnering (for my athletic, influencing and maybe pee location ability) with…