![]() ![]() season opener, I purchased a bike bag, packed up my bike and jumped on a plane to Philadelphia in May 2022. Because the club is heavily populated on the East Coast, I wanted to meet the larger group so when they hosted their second annual K.R.T./Q.R.T. In late 2021, I joined the Los Angeles chapter of K.R.T. I now had a community of friends to lean on, a healthy routine, and I felt free. In late 2020, I felt healthy and was fully out of my depression. Slowly the weight started to melt off my body and my mindset changed. Through Major Taylor, I learned new techniques, better bike handling, the mechanics of riding in a group, pacelines, and safety precautions. In 2021, I started riding with the Major Taylor Cycling Club of Los Angeles. I started to get faster and stronger on my bike and I wanted to learn more, so I joined more clubs. I looked forward to our rides every week and I was committed to improving myself and pushing myself to eat better and to lose weight. There were almost 100 people some nights riding around the city-it felt like a party on the bike. I joined them and started to ride twice a week. I saw posts on Instagram for RideWitUs, inviting beginner cyclists to ride. This time, there weren’t many cars to worry about on the streets as many people were at home.ĭuring this same time, there was an explosion of new cyclists riding bikes outside and small communities of young Black cyclists started to form. When the pandemic hit in 2020, I bought myself a bike, this time a carbon fiber Trek Domane, and started riding outdoors again. Indoor Cycling Helped This Cyclist Come Out.With every ride, I got a confidence boost! Mentally, I worked a lot of things out on that bike. Tunde’s classes were tough but she would talk to the class like it was a therapy session. Later at home, I downloaded the Peloton app and started to ride on the indoor bike at the gym again. I was inspired by how she turned her life around, and had a positive relationship with her body and her confidence. Her story of being an overweight dark-skinned teenager really resonated with me. ![]() Then in November 2019, I met a Peloton instructor, Tunde Oyeneyin, at an AfroTech conference in Oakland, California. In 2019, I fell into a depression which affected my personal life and work life. My self-worth got wrapped into how much I weighed and that’s a terrible feeling to carry around. I have a demanding work schedule and I mostly sit at a desk in front of the computer all day, which doesn’t help. I tried various diets, weight loss programs, and different forms of exercise and the weight would come off but always came back. Over the years, I’ve struggled with my managing weight and due to that, I’ve struggled with my overall self-confidence as well. The bike tour is about 20 miles across Long Beach, California, and I’ve been doing it every year since 2017. It falls near my birthday in early October, and I used it as a way to celebrate. However, I wanted to find a way to ride with other people and found an event that had both running and biking combined-The Long Beach Marathon, which also has a 5K, half marathon, and bike tour. When I first got my bike, I would go outside to ride on weekends by myself on the Ballona Creek Bike Path or along the Marvin Braude Bike Trail, both in Los Angeles, because it didn’t feel safe to ride the streets with cars buzzing by me. I bought my first entry level road bike in 2017-a Trek Domane AL 2 from Helen’s Cycles in Santa Monica, California. ![]() Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play ![]()
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