3 Pro Cyclists Share How They Spend a Life of Bikes With the People They Love Most
Finding love takes time, and riding bikes can consume a lot of it. So, it is no surprise that cyclists like to date other cyclists—if done right, time spent on the bike can be time well spent with someone you like.
Pedaling through challenging rides can disarm us, allowing us to expose a side of ourselves that would otherwise take more time to dig up. If the opportunity to align your passions presents itself, you may just open a door to a future of adventures and bike rides with someone who speaks your language. Derailleurs and watts, that is.
Here are three love stories from three different relationships. Spokes and hubs tie all of them together, but what it actually takes to keep the wheels going in each one of them is much bigger than bikes.
The Traveling Engagement Ring
It was at a group ride in Sonoma County, California, in the middle of winter, when former pro road cyclist Ted King met Laura Spencer (now Laura King), one of the few women on that day’s ride. While Laura wasn’t exclusively looking to date a cyclist, she was looking for someone who shared her same passion for endurance sports and the outdoors.
“We ended up kind of separating from some of the group, and yeah, I guess my tactic when riding with him was to act like I wasn’t breathing too hard and asked him a lot of really open-ended questions so that he would be the one doing the talking,” Laura told Bicycling.
It was January of 2016, and Ted had just retired from world tour racing, looking forward to a life of normalcy back in the states, but life had something else in store. If Laura wasn’t looking to date a cyclist specifically, Ted didn’t want to date a cyclist at all.
“Well, professional cycling is such a life of austerity and starvation and being away from normal stuff and being away from family and skipping holidays. In my mind, the term ‘cyclist’ was a racing cyclist who just lives that life,” Ted told Bicycling. “I joke that the only person who likes to ride a bike more than I do is my wife.”
A year later, Laura and Ted took a summer bike trip to France, where they had signed up for the Haute Route, a seven-day event with six point-to-point routes along the Pyrenees mountains and surrounding areas. A pretty romantic bike trip, Ted had thought, before realizing a few days into the trip that the group of riders was pretty competitive and that no one would take it more seriously than his partner Laura.
“I rode that entire week with an engagement ring in my pocket. But Laura was so gung-ho on doing well, and it was an intense week for a variety of reasons. So, I never had the opportunity to pull her to the side of the road and say, ‘will you marry me?’” Ted said.
The day they got back to San Francisco, Ted wanted to keep the momentum of the European trip going so he could finally pop the question and give her the ring that he had carried for hundreds of miles in his jersey pocket. So they got a baguette, a wheel of cheese, and a bottle of wine and headed to Mount Tamalpais, a place they had stopped at many times during rides to watch the sunset. “Gotta have a good view,” Ted said. And the rest is history.
Today, Laura and Ted live in Richmond, Vermont, where they are expecting their second child. They keep hectic schedules, organizing the gravel event Rooted Vermont, among other endeavors. But still, bike dates to the ice cream shop, for example, is one of the favorite things to do with their toddler Hazel, who loves feeling the wind on her face as she rides shotgun on her bike seat from Mac Ride.
The adventures don’t stop there, even with a second baby on the way. With good communication, logistics, and flexibility, cycling still plays a big part in their lives.
“I think cycling has added to our lives in so many different aspects, it’s hard to imagine life without it. And it just so happens that it’s fun to be able to share it together,” Laura said.
Fixie Love on Miller Street
Ayesha McGowan is a professional road racer for Liv Racing, but back in 2011, when she met Will Loyd, they were just a couple of fixie kids playing bikes in New York City. They initially connected via Twitter, where one day, Loyd invited McGowan and friends to meet up at Miller Street in Queens, where Loyd and his friends had found a steep hill to bomb down on fixed-gear bikes. You know, for fun.
“It’s a pretty steep hill, and there’s a traffic light at the bottom. It was a very stupid thing to do. But we’d time the light, and everybody was successful. Nobody got hurt, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” McGowan told Bicycling. “So I went for it, but then I found out no one had ever done it before.”
In the beginning, they took their relationship slow and kept it friendly with phone conversations and the occasional fixie meetup. But as their rapport developed, they were quick to sign up for new adventures as a team: There was Cranksgiving, an alley-cat-style race with multiple checkpoints that collects food and other goods for charity during Thanksgiving time. And then there was a fixed-gear century ride from New Haven, Connecticut, back to New York City.
“That felt really cool to me, that I had somebody willing to go with my crazy plan. And then it turned into going with other crazy plans, like let's go race [bikes] in Milan,” McGowan said.
Today, the two have different goals when it comes to cycling. To McGowan, riding bikes is now a full-time job that comes with new pressures and responsibilities. And on the other hand, Loyd’s relationship with the bike has gone from an adrenaline seeker to a more relaxed approach in which he rides for adventure, fun, or to keep McGowan company during some of her workouts.
When speaking of balancing a relationship with a shared passion, McGowan shared, “I think my advice is to let people enjoy things the way they want to enjoy things. I’ve found that a few of our friends who have partners that are getting into cycling want to dictate what that looks like. Or they want them to share the same level of excitement right from the jump.”
This year, McGowan and Loyd will be spending some time in Barcelona, Spain, while she trains with her team. They plan to get a pair of e-bikes, a townie for her and a gravel bike for him, to serve as an equalizer and facilitate some trips around town, keeping things a little more casual when riding together.
“It sounds like a really cool way to have little fun adventures. And I think I think e-bikes haters are ridiculous because e-bikes are so fun. And so, that’s my next frontier. I want to spread the joy of the e-bike,” McGowan added.
Good Things [Also] Come in Threes
Austin Killips is an up-and-coming cyclocross racer from Chicago, who also dabbles in track and gravel for Pratt Racing. Killips and her partner Bayley Day met on Tinder about five years ago while Day worked as a mechanic in a local bike shop. They hit it off right away, and many bike adventures ensued.
“There were really great moments where I felt super encouraged by [Austin,] connected and capable in a way that I hadn’t really felt growing up. I was not a sporty person as a kid. I was an artist, and I wouldn’t touch sports because I didn’t think I could, and I didn’t see other women that looked like me,” Day told Bicycling. “Being able to ride with her and feel like that was a safe space for me to explore what my body was capable of was super valuable and has been a foundation of our relationship to some degree.”
Last summer, Pratt Racing put together a team pursuit squad for Elite Track Cycling Nationals, which took place at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania. Killips and her teammates won silver in the event, a special moment that she got to share with teammate Evelyn Williamson, whom with she is also romantically involved—Killips, Day, and Williamson are in a polyamorous relationship.
Williamson, who is into the fixed-gear racing scene, and Killips started corresponding via social media back in March of 2020 when Williamson lived in Oakland, California. They shared a love for cycling and were also learning how to navigate a career in the sport as transgender athletes.
“So I came to Chicago and was just very happy—I got along with everyone, and it just kind of worked out,” Williamson said. “There was no expectation that we would all date together. But it just so happened that that worked out really well for all of us.”
While their relationship may be far from traditional, it doesn’t fall short when it comes to support, understanding, and the many other qualities that make this type of bond everlasting.
“I was with [Austin] for the majority of her East Coast cyclocross stint this last fall, pitting for the team. And just being around for that was incredibly fulfilling, to see her perform as well as she did,” Day said.
As for their perfect bike date, Day said she would love to take Killips and Williamson on a bike camping trip during summertime. Williamson said would love to take them out west to explore the Marin Headlands and the North Bay. But in the meantime, as they look to escape the frigid temperatures of the midwest, the trio will be spending some time in Bentonville, Arkansas, where they plan to explore gravel roads, mountain bike parks, and anywhere else their bikes can take them.
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