5 Things I Learned about Gravel and Surviving a Global Pandemic from Selene Yeager

I've been following Selene Yeager's work for about a year. I realized she is a co-author of Stacy Sim's book, Roar, and found her articles in Bicycling Magazine to be well-researched and filled with information that I could practically apply. I started listening to the podcast that she co-hosts, The Paceline Podcast, around the time the world was coming off its rails thanks to COVID-19. I found her to be a voice of reason in the middle of a lot of extreme and crazy information coming out about athletes and the virus. I knew she had to be one of our earliest guests because people needed to hear that voice.

Listen to our interview with Selene Yeager

Here are five things I learned from our interview with Selene Yeager

You'd be a psychopath if you weren't currently having some bad days

It's normal to be struggling with your motivation right now, especially when it comes to your workouts. We would all say that we know that, but when you hear a professional athlete who is a long-time cycling coach and wrote the book on gravel, you realize that no one is getting through this unscathed. One of the ways Selene is getting through this is by leaning into her community. Our community may not be able to be together right now, but we can still help each other. Selene's community does this is just by sending each other photos from their rides as proof they left the house that day!

Approach new information with a journalistic mindset

I think this is useful information at any time, but especially right now for athletes. So much information is coming out so quickly. Should you do high-intensity training or not? Does endurance training damage your immune system? Do you have to be more than 6-feet from the people you ride with? I appreciate that Selene approaches every new piece of information with a journalistic mindset - asking what the sources are? What do other experts say? Do we know the whole story based on this one piece of information? It's easy to react to everything around us rather than take some time to figure out what's going on. Selene refers to the process as learning to cut through the noise.

Gravel means a lot of different things

Selene gives us some of the backstory on her book, Gravel. Since gravel cycling can mean so many different things to so many different people, she was finding that people would often leave an event or ride feeling confused. Was that single track gravel? Was that mud road gravel? She wrote it to give people a good sense of what defines gravel and help them evaluate the different tools they need for different types of rides. I think this is important when it comes to enjoying the sport and not getting in over our heads.

When you see an opportunity go for it

Selene also talks about meeting Dr. Stacy Sims and recognizing the gap that Stacy could fill. She had never heard anyone talk about nutrition and hydration for women like Stacy did, so she stood in a long-line and convinced Stacy to co-author a book, Roar. The whole story is worth a listen, but the underlying principle that I took from it was we when we see an opportunity where we think we can contribute, we need to be bold.

At some point, women need to embrace strength training

Related to the conversation about Roar, we discuss how, at some point, female cyclists need to embrace strength training. As we age, we'll rapidly lose muscle and strength training is the only way to counter that. But outside of just the physical benefit, strength training is empowering!

I really could have talked with Selene all day. I look forward to having her back on the podcast in the future!