Selene Yeager - The Bicycling Big Book of Cycling for Women: Everything You Need to Know for Whatever, Whenever, and Wherever You Ride

Selene Yeager is a top-selling professional health and fitness writer who lives what she writes as a NASM-certified personal trainer, USA Cycling certified coach, professional mountain bike racer with Rare Disease Cycling, and All-American Ironman triathlete. She has authored, coauthored, or contributed to more than two dozen books, and her work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. She lives in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

For all the women who ride to be free

Do women need their own cycling book? Do women need their own womens specific bikes? Do women need their own group rides, clothing, and gear? After all, arent we all just cyclists at this point, not women cyclists?

Yes... and no.

Yes, we allmen and women who love and ride bikesare cyclists. We share the same loves. We all love the sun in our face, slicing through the air, the sound of our tires whirring on the ground. We love feeling like were flying. We love the freedom. We love the camaraderie, the spirited competition, the satisfaction of a mountain pass conquered and a hard ride completed. We love how irrationally delicious peanut butter tastes 65 miles into a 100-mile day. We love beautiful bikes and sweet new shoes. You dont need any particular chromosome combinations to appreciate all that.

But lets face it, the cycling experience still has and will always have some significant gender differences, even as the sport evolves. Though more women than ever are pedaling bikes of all kinds, were still a minority in the sport. Depending on where you live, it can still be hard to find other women to ride and train with. Most shops are still male dominated, and though the guys who work there may be very nice and accommodating, it can still be kind of awkward and maybe even impossible to get all your womens specific questions answeredor more importantly, to have womens specific needs you may not even know you have addressed by a man, even a sensitive, knowledgeable one.

So, though we all are cyclists, all those not so insignificant differences in our anatomy and our very DNA do make us different from our male counterparts. Or as cyclist, triathlete, and nutrition and exercise physiology researcher Stacy Sims, PhD, likes to say:

I love that saying. Its so simple and so obvious, yet so scientific and complex all in five little words. There are the blatant differenceswe have breasts, we can get pregnant, we have vaginasthat can influence our gear and cycling needs. There are also the less obvious differences. Our ever-changing hormones, whether over the course of a month or our lifetime (or both, really), change the way we burn fuel, and even what fuel we burn, before, during, and after we ride. Our nutrition needs are different, as are our hydration requirements.

Though we are not just small men, by and large we are smaller than men. Our weight is distributed differently, too. All of that changes how we fit on a bike and how a bike might behave under our female frame. Speaking of frames, the female one has special needs to stay strong. Our muscles, bones, and ligaments are under the influence of our hormones and demand a uniquely female touch when we ride, race, and train.

Our relationships and our relationship to the sport are often different, as well. We have a different history with cycling. We live in a different present. Inevitably, we will have a different future in the sport than men will, despite all we have in common. With all of the unique wants, needs, challenges, and opportunities that women riders have and face, it only makes sense that women should indeed have their own cycling booka big book, one that answers all the questions a woman who rides a bike wants to know, including many she never even thought to ask.

FROM CLIPPING IN TO TOEING THE LINE, AT EVERY LEVEL

I want to be clear that though this book is very beginner friendly, it is