A FINE BALANCE
Racing cyclists, we are told, are busy doing nothing a lot of the time. The portions of their life that they spend riding their bikes can obviously be frenetic, but the bits in between, which add up to quite a lot of time, are for rest and recovery (and airports). The harder they rest, the harder they can ride. Siri, show me what inactivity looks like: a professional cyclist in recovery mode.
This is not true of Tayler Wiles.
“I don’t like to sit still” the Trek-Segafredo rider tells Procycling. “I always like to be doing something. I’ve always been the kind of person that needs to be productive, to feel a sense of worth.”
Wiles spends part of her spare time working a part-time job, as a customer services manager for a friend’s cycling clothing company. Trek-Segafredo was the first team to give their female riders salary parity with the men, and her moonlighting is not out of financial necessity. It just works mental muscles that cycling cannot reach.
“In my down time I spend time answering emails and solving problems, which I really love. I love solving problems and mentally I need to be doing lots of things besides riding my bike,” she says. “It gives me balance and helps me ride my bike well and gives me something else to focus on. I can focus on training, then have something on the side to keep my mind away from the bike. That’s a positive thing. It makes me more balanced and
