Ayesha McGowan went from teaching music and delivering packages on a bike to shattering barriers in professional cycling, becoming the first African American female road cyclist in 2021. Though health challenges led to early retirement, Ayesha is now focused on empowering women of color in cycling and expanding access to the sport.
Ayesha McGowan went from teaching music and delivering packages on a bike to shattering barriers in professional cycling, becoming the first African American female road cyclist in 2021. Though health challenges led to early retirement, Ayesha is now focused on empowering women of color in cycling and expanding access to the sport.
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Ayesha McGowan:
There wasn't really a pathway to becoming pro. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just making it up as I went along. It was a lot of just training by myself and racing by myself and traveling as much as possible and trying to get as many opportunities as I could until I finally got the big one.
Shelby Stanger:
Ayesha McGowan was working as a music teacher and bike messenger when she set her sights on becoming a professional cyclist. There were a few Black women in her sport at the time, but Ayesha knew she had potential, and she worked hard in pursuit of her goal. Eventually, in 2021, Ayesha made history when she became the first African American professional female road cyclist. While health issues led her to an early retirement, Ayesha is now on a mission to create more opportunities for women of color to get out and ride. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.
Ayesha McGowan, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Ayesha McGowan:
Thank you.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, I'm talking to you and you're in Spain. Where in Spain are you living?
Ayesha McGowan:
I'm in Girona. It is about an hour and 20 minute drive north of Barcelona.
Shelby Stanger:
I love it. Okay, well let's go back to the beginning. How did you find cycling?
Ayesha McGowan:
Well, I rode bikes as a child. I got two bikes for Christmas when I was five years old, one from my parents and one from my grandparents. And I learned how to ride by teaching myself, by going in circles in my grandparents' garage. And I skinned both knees in the process, but I got it. And I think I had a pretty typical playful bike experience as a child. You ride a bike with your friends, you go to their house, whatever. Nothing spectacular there.
But then as an adult, I was going to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. And I moved there in January, so it was really, really cold, and I was so miserable. So I had to walk to the train, which was about 10, 15 minutes from my apartment, and then I had to wait for the train, and then I had to walk to the building where classes were, and that was another 10, 15 minutes, depending on how fast or slow you were walking. And I hated it. And so a friend recommended that I get a bike.
And so I asked my mom if I could have her old bike, because I knew she wasn't using it. And it had been sitting in our shed for so long, it still had my sister's baby carrier attached to it, and my sister's eight years older than me. So it'd been there for a while, but I knew it was there, and so I asked to use it and I got it fixed up.
And I was still in Boston. I'd been riding for a little bit. I went to my local bike shop, which was Bikes Not Bombs, in Jamaica Plain, where I lived. And they had a sign-up for adult instructor training. And basically, the premise was that they'll teach you bike mechanics in exchange for you helping them lead their youth cycling program. And so I did the program because in my head I was like, "Oh, great, I don't have to pay a mechanic to fix my bike anymore. I'm cheap and broke, so that's great," but I didn't expect to learn so much from that class about just community. And I got really into bike advocacy.
And then before I left Boston, I was a bike messenger for two or three months. I was so excited about it. I thought it was the coolest job in the world. I had to go to City Hall or some special office to get a license. I still have my license somewhere around here. It's a metal placard, so I kept it.
Shelby Stanger:
While she was working as a bike messenger, Ayesha rode a fixed-gear bike, also called a fixie. This kind of bike only has one gear, which means that in order for the bike to move, the pedals have to move. There's no coasting. A fixie also doesn't have brakes for stopping. Instead, you have to slow your wheel by resisting with your legs, countering the forward motion of the pedals. It's a little dangerous and a lot challenging, but really fun.
Because Ayesha was cycling all day every day as a bike messenger, and the goal was to deliver things fast, she grew really strong. In 2010, she moved to Brooklyn, where she became involved in cycling advocacy. She helped organize events to support getting women on bikes and also rode tandems with people with disabilities. At the same time, Ayesha found a community of fellow fixie riders and started racing in fixed-gear events, like goldsprints and alleycats. If those names sound like I'm speaking gibberish, you're not alone. These races are pretty alternative.
Ayesha McGowan:
An alleycat is basically an unsanctioned street race where it's supposed to simulate a messenger's day or a messenger's job, I guess. This is me, so someone might disagree with me, but this is my interpretation of it. And so basically, they give you a manifest, which is what you get as a messenger, which has checkpoints on it. And usually you get to decide how you get to those checkpoints, but you have to go to all of them and finish first to win.
And sometimes they'll be really fun, like the checkpoints will have activities at them. One of them was like you have to shoot a basketball from the three-point line or something silly. And sometimes it's just ... You have to go to the checkpoints and then get the manifest signed by the checkpoint person that's waiting there. But basically, you're going through the city and just trying to complete this manifest faster than anyone else. So you don't really follow the rules of the road when you're doing these races. You run red lights.
Shelby Stanger:
Do not try this at home.
Ayesha McGowan:
You cut in front of traffic. You're trying to get there faster than anybody else, and nothing else really matters. Safety is not the number one thing in your head.
And there is an art to it. I think a lot of people see the videos of fixed-gear people riding through New York City or any of these cities, and they're like, "This is so dangerous and stupid and reckless." And not going to completely disagree with that, but at the same time, I think there's an art to how someone can ride like that in the way that ... It has its place. It's not for everyone.
And at a certain point, it became not for me anymore. I'd done it a few times, and I think the last time I was riding with a friend and the light turned red and I made us both stop and I was like, "I think this is the end of my alleycat career. I'm definitely growing out of it. I'm prioritizing safety over winning this bike race." And so that made me want to do more structured racing in a safer way.
Shelby Stanger:
Ayesha stopped doing these kinds of underground races and decided to work toward a more official racing career. She signed up for clinics to learn more about organized racing. She also started competing in criteriums, or crits. A criterium is a lap race around a closed circuit, often held on city streets. Think NASCAR for bikes. There's a well-known event that started in New York called the Red Hook Crit, where competitors ride fixed-gear bikes around the circuit. Historically, the Red Hook Crit has been a men's competition. In 2014, they opened up a woman's field for the first time, and Ayesha decided to enter.
Ayesha McGowan:
The Red Hook Crit Brooklyn was my first official bike race, and it went horribly. It went absolutely horribly. It was freezing cold and rain, which I've established is not my jam. And I had no idea what I was doing. They set us off, and I was so cold and so wet, and it felt like everyone else took off and I was going backwards. And so eventually, I got lapped, which means that they had gone around the entire course and come back around and caught me. When they lapped me, it caused a big crash. And so they had to stop the race and get someone off the course who needed medical attention. So I left that race in tears. And somehow, after that experience, I was like, "Man, I could be really good at this if I knew what was going on." That was my takeaway.
Shelby Stanger:
After that crit, Ayesha signed up for a bunch of clinics to learn how to become a better bike racer. She kept entering races, even though it sometimes felt like she had no idea what she was doing. Still, she quickly improved. And in her third crit, she won the state championship for her category. For the next seven years, Ayesha continued training in racing until she finally went pro.
Ayesha McGowan is a retired professional road cyclist. She started biking in earnest back in college, simply as a mode of transportation. When she moved to New York after school, she dove into the cycling scene and competed in underground street races. Eventually, in 2014, Ayesha decided to take her passion a step further and pursue a career as a pro athlete.
So when did you officially go pro, and what was that journey like? Because I know nothing about what it was like to become a female professional cyclist, especially in this period of time. Today, it might make a little bit more sense, but when you were doing it, it's not like a ton of women were professional cyclists, not a lot of women of color, especially.
Ayesha McGowan:
So I think today it's still quite complicated, especially as an American. There's not a ton of opportunity. I feel like, especially for Dutch women in the Netherlands, you throw a rock, you hit a cycling club. And so there's a lot of places where you can get started and have a trajectory towards something. They take the cycling really, really seriously there. But America is far more loose. It is a very, very large country, so it's really hard to organize it in that way.
For me, I moved from Brooklyn because I was dating my now husband, and we got married and he got a job in the San Francisco area. And so we moved to California, and that worked out for me because it's a really great place to ride bikes. And so while I was there, I was training, I was racing, trying to figure things out, trying to upgrade. And so I had won a couple of state championships in New York, and so it gave me a bit of confidence and propelled me a little bit, and I was pretty good at the bike racing thing. It wasn't a super exciting experience, to be honest. It was a lot of just training by myself and racing by myself and traveling as much as possible and trying to get as many opportunities as I could.
Shelby Stanger:
When was this?
Ayesha McGowan:
I think it was the summer of 2016 that I did this big summer push for the first time. So in America, the biggest racing scene I think that's got the most momentum is the criterium racing scene. So we talked about that earlier, the closed circuit crits. So they do that on the road as well. And they have a bunch of these series crits. So it's multiple days. The biggest one is the Tour of America's Dairyland in Wisconsin, and I think that one's about 10 or 11 days. And then there's one in Chicago that's also about 10 days. They have them in St. Louis and Tulsa.
But basically, I wanted to go to all these places and race all these races, or as many of them as I could. And so I put together a calendar of what I wanted to do and mapped out how much I thought it was going to cost, including flights and accommodations. I spent a lot of time sleeping on people's couches and in guest rooms. There's a lot of kindness that helped me get to where I was trying to go as well.
Shelby Stanger:
So when did you officially turn pro?
Ayesha McGowan:
In 2019. And I started working with Liv-
Shelby Stanger:
Hold on. Is Liv a brand?
Ayesha McGowan:
It is a women's cycling brand, dedicated to women. So they make bikes for women, helmets, all kinds of gear, but it's women-specific. And so I'd worked with them for a year, and it was great. I had a great time. And then they gave me a contract, and on the contract it said something like, "Professional athlete," or something. I can't remember. And I was like, "Oh." So that, for me, was ... Check mark.
Shelby Stanger:
Once Ayesha signed a permanent contract, she was able to live in Europe, where most of the races were located. This happened to be during the COVID pandemic, and every time she would enter a race, it would get canceled. So of course, Ayesha's first race under contract really stands out in her memory. It was a stage race, which is a kind of competition that lasts multiple days. Each day, there's a different route, and at the end, the times are added up and the fastest overall rider wins.
Ayesha McGowan:
So the race that I did in Europe when they finally had a race that I could race, because everything was getting canceled, and the important part of this is that it was a stage race. And if you don't finish the stage, you can't start the next one. The first few days were okay, but not spectacular. But then the sixth or seventh stage ... I think it was the sixth the day, I don't know where this gumption came from, but I forced my way through the group and jumped through the gap. So there were women that had already gone off the front. And caught up and made my way into the breakaway. And I was so excited, and I felt good. I wasn't tired or struggling. And the breakaway made it all the way to the finish. So I'm in this position where I was like, "Wow, I'm going to have to sprint. I'm going to have to sprint for the win."
And so the director is in my ear, because we have radios. And he's in my ear and he's like, "Well, you're going to have to sprint from this point and just give it your all and don't look back." I thought the point was a little too early, but I was doing what I was told because this is what I signed up for. So he goes, "Go now, go now, go now."
So I start sprinting, and I'm going and I'm going and I'm going, and I'm sort of running out of gas. But I held on, and I think I got seventh place. And that was a really big result for me because it was the first time that I'd done a stage race in Europe, and I had so many people tell me that I would never be good at it and I could never do it and that I was never going to succeed. And so it wasn't a win, but it felt like a win for me. It wasn't first place, but it was a win.
Shelby Stanger:
I love it.
Ayesha McGowan:
That was a great day.
Shelby Stanger:
Ayesha had a promising start to her pro career in Europe, but before long, her body started telling her that something wasn't right. She was dealing with health issues that made it hard to keep up with her training and her race schedule. Eventually, she made the tough choice to stop riding competitively and focus on getting better.
So are you retired now?
Ayesha McGowan:
Yeah. I had a lot of health issues. So my dreams came true and then my nightmares came true around the same time. So actually, from 2016, I'd started having these weird digestive issues, and it progressively got worse. So by the time 2021 rolled around, it was really, really, really bad.
And so in the beginning of 2022, I was racing at the world tour level finally, finally got that big elusive contract that I wanted. And I couldn't keep anything down. I couldn't do anything. I felt terrible and miserable. And I guess I'd lived that way for so long that it didn't seem like a big deal, but then there was this week in between races that I was staying with one of the directors of the team, and it was her responsibility to make sure that I had food, and I couldn't eat anything. It would always make my stomach hurt. I felt terrible. And I could just see finally through someone else's eyes that it wasn't okay. I justified it. I'd had these spreadsheets of foods I could eat and foods I couldn't eat, and I was getting people on Twitter to help me translate them to different languages so the chefs in the different countries could make sure that they were feeding me correctly.
But anyway, I was like, "Okay, this is a problem. I need to solve it." And I tried to solve it in America in 2021, and they told me that I just had IBS. And I was like, "No, that can't be right." But when I was in America, I saw a gynecologist and she's like, "You have fibroids. You should get that checked out."
Shelby Stanger:
If you don't know, fibroids are masses that form in and around the uterus, and they range from the size of a seed to the size of a grapefruit. Fibroids can be extremely painful and affect hormones, digestion, and more.
Ayesha McGowan:
In 2022, when I couldn't race and I couldn't function, I decided, "Okay, I think it's the fibroids." And so I went to a gynecologist here in Spain, and she said the same thing, "I could just take out your uterus." And I was like, "Are there any other options? Because that sounds terrible." And she found a surgeon who was willing to do a complicated surgery to remove the fibroids, but the complicated surgery was basically a C-section. And C-sections are really tough to recover from and not ideal for a top-level professional athlete. And I am still recovering from it, to be honest, and it's been about two years.
And so I got the surgery, they gave me another contract, I raced some more, but I was just never the same. It was just a rough couple of years. It was a real bummer because I had worked so hard to achieve this big thing, and then this got in the way. And I'm old for a professional cyclist. I'm not old-old, but I'm old for a professional cyclist. And so with all of these barriers in the way, there's just but so much that one person can take. And so I'm at the point where now I just want to ride bikes and have fun and make friends and do cool things and see where life can take me now. I set this big lofty goal, I did achieve it, and I will always be able to say that. It didn't necessarily go the way I wanted it to once I got there, but you can't have everything all the time, I guess.
Shelby Stanger:
Retiring from professional sports can be tough. After years following a direct path toward your goal, it can feel unsettling not to know what's coming next. For a lot of athletes, the next chapter starts with reconnecting to their sport from a different angle, which is exactly what Ayesha has done. These days, she's riding simply because she loves to ride, no pressure or finish lines, just joy. And her love for cycling has fueled something even bigger. When Ayesha turned pro, she became the first African American woman to race professionally on the road. Now, she's using her voice and experience to help open doors for others.
Part of your career is advocacy and bringing other people on this ride with you. So when did advocacy become a part of your life and getting other people involved?
Ayesha McGowan:
So I feel like before I was a bike racer, I was a bike advocate, and really focused on bike safety and community building and opportunity building in the bike space. And I feel like I did a lot of good work through InTandem, the tandem bike program and through WE Bike NYC.
And then when I started racing bikes, I was wholly invested in myself, honestly. I had a blog. I was sharing as much information as I could, but I was advocating for myself more than anything.
But then in 2020, I had all this downtime and quite a few resources that I'd built up while trying to achieve this dream. And I wasn't sure what was going to happen, because no one was sure what was going to happen because the pandemic was very confusing for everyone. But I was so tired of seeing despair and just so much negativity everywhere, and I wanted to create something that focused on Black joy.
And so I put together a virtual summit, an online summit, that people could attend from the comfort of their pandemic pods, called Thee Abundance Summit. And I decided that I was going to fundraise and use the money to support other women of color who wanted to try cycling by sending them to the Tour of America's Dairyland in Wisconsin. So this was the full idea. It had many parts, but that was the start of Thee Abundance Project. And so we held the summit in 2021 and 2022, and we used the funds the first year to send eight adults and one 11-year-old girl to Wisconsin to race bikes. And it was a really cool experience for all of them.
But basically, the idea is what will happen if you eliminate as many of the barriers as possible to bike racing? Because there are so many barriers. It's really expensive. It's not super accessible. The community is very, very white and not always the most welcoming. And a lot of the races at the Tour of America's Dairyland can be in these interesting communities that aren't really accustomed to having people of color in their space like that, and so they are not always the most thoughtful.
And so they had some experiences, the riders had some experiences that weren't super savory, but I think it was a give and take in building the community in both directions, where it was giving these women of color an opportunity to race bikes and see if they liked it, but also exposing the community to these women of color and normalizing us being in that space.
And so we've been running that program since 2021, and I feel like the number of women of color racing bikes has grown tremendously. And a byproduct of the program is that they have built community amongst themselves. So now, the women who have gone through what we call the Mini Grant Program see each other at bike races, they form these little pods, they cheer each other on, even though they're not necessarily on the same teams. And it's just a really cool thing to have created and been a part of.
And I think ideally, I would want to be able to take a group of elite women of color to do kermesse racing in Europe. I think that was always the end goal for me, to see that they can get that exposure that I got, and give them the opportunity to see what it's like and also have other people see them. But we'll see.
Shelby Stanger:
If you want to learn more about Thee Abundance Project, you can check it out on Instagram, @theeabundanceproject. You can also follow Ayesha on Instagram, @ayesuppose. That's A-Y-E-S-U-P-P-O-S-E. You can also check out her website, aquickbrownfox.com. It's full of blog posts about her journey to pro cycling. We'll link to it in our show notes.
If you liked this episode, we have a number of past interviews with some amazing cyclists, Lael Wilcox, who rode around the world, pro mountain biker Eliot Jackson, Sarah Swallow, who founded the Ruta Del Jefe ride, and Kait Boyle, a competitive cyclist who recovered from what many considered a career-ending injury.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hanna Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.