Show #666 – April 7, 2025

Guest: Alison Tetrick

She really wanted to wear skirts and get her nails done, but Alison Tetrick, while remaining ever the fashionable girl, is a feisty competitor – in all sorts of ways.

Starting out as a tennis player in high school, she played in college on a full ride where she studied biochemistry.  She worked in drug discovery research for Amgen, and then….with all her energy and competitive urges, was egged on to bike racing by her grandfather Paul Tetrick, who found his passion for bike racing in his 60’s and raced well into his 80’s.  (scroll down to see Paul & Ali’s info)

Alison’s trajectory toward success on the bike was almost instantaneous as you will hear in our conversation. But it wasn’t all unicorns and roses.

As strong and capable as Alison is, she tells us about some of the things that will take a person down – physically, mentally, and emotionally – and learning to deal with them – asking for help, realizing you can’t always do everything on your own, will shape you in new and perhaps much better ways.

Our conversation runs the gamut from her early successes on the bike to the work she is doing now to get more young girls into the sport. And her honesty, humility, and frankness are refreshing!

You can follow Alison and her journey @amtetrick on social media. Check out her bandanas  to help and support more girls and women on bikes.

Here is the link to Gloria Liu’s article, Cycling’s Silent Epidemic.

And if you find yourself at either Unbound or Sea Otter, look her up!  She’ll be there.

I’d like to let you know that there is now expanded content for most episodes on my brand new Substack page.

Next time on the show, I’ll be speaking with Sarah Barnes, another podcaster and  journalist who specializes in micromobility – especially autonomous vehicles – and urban geography.  We’ll explain that too. 

Ex-pro racer Levi Leipheimer will also be joining me to talk about his Gran Fondo as well as his ideas about how to reboot road riding here in the U.S.  I’m ALL ears on that one!

Transcript_April 7

 

 

 

 

Show #665 – April 2, 2025

Guest: Joe Lindsey

I love talking about bike racing with Escape Collective’s Joe Lindsey because he has such a superb grasp of the sport – for both men and women.

Today, our conversation covers a little bit of the Spring Classics – Paris-Nice, Milan San-Remo – both men’s and women’s editions – as well as looking ahead to Paris-Roubaix and on into the upcoming Big Tours.

Having failed at Milan-San Remo five times, Tadej won’t be satisfied until he wins that as well as any other Monument he has in his sights.

We muse about how Tadej will do at Paris Roubaix next week, being the first to attempt it AND the Tour de France as defending champion in the same season since Greg LeMond in 1991.

I always learn so much from Joe.  As he reminds us, this coming weekend, the 268.9-kilometre for men and 148 km  Tour of Flanders for women pushes off on Sunday, April 6th from Brugge, Belgium with a who’s who of illustrious riders.

You can watch the race via FloBikes, but unfortunately there won’t be any other coverage in the U.S.

Of course, we talk about how bike racing is – or maybe more accurately – isn’t – covered by the media, especially here in the States, and why we haven’t re-embraced track racing as the perfect American spectator sport.

Next time on TOC, we speak with super start Alison Tetrick.  We talk about her TBI recovery as well as the surgery she opted for to keep riding her bike when sitting on a saddle became unbearable.

Transcript_April 2