In this episode Geoff & Gerry meet with Colleen Gulick. Colleen is a professional cyclist, all women cycling team director, race organizer, small business owner, and much more.
It was great to have a conversation with such a smart and entrepreneurial person who's very passionate about all facets of cycling.
Colleen is a Pennsylvania native who grew up close to the Trexler Town velodrome (T-Town) also know as the Lehigh Valley Velodrome, where she entered the youth program at the age of 6. Colleen rode her first national championship at the age of 11 and has collected 43 medals and 5 gold medals on the national and international stage.
It was very cool to hear that Colleen started with ice-hockey because she liked the Mighty Duck movie so much! From ice-hockey she followed in her mothers footsteps playing field hockey. Needless to say she was a very active child combining the 3 sports mentioned above and dabbled with other sport like track & field and Lacrosse.
Colleen talks about her time in college (University of Maryland) playing field hockey at D1 level trying to combine that with cycling.
After college, she committed fully to cycling and with great success. She enjoys racing crits and track the most. On the track she participates in Madison and Kierin and she talks about her experience competing abroad in countries like Tasmania, the Netherlands, Chili, England and more.
Our conversation moves on to talk about her coaching practice and how coaching has evolved with having more tools and science available now a days.
We talk about nutrition and how constant glucose metering helped Colleen. Its super interesting to learn about the glucose peaks and valleys and the impact this has on your performance. Colleen even tells us about finding superfoods through monitoring to support optimal performance.
Colleen shares how she deals with celiac disease on a day to day basis and explains how being a boring eater helps her to control this disease.
The segment about how and why she started her own all women cycling team is amazing and shows that with determination, vision, and passion you can achieve anything. Highly, highly recommend listening to this segment. P.s. Colleen is always looking for new talented riders!
A cool person obviously also rides cool races like the fixie Red Hook crit series who she won in Brooklyn and came in 4th in London. We talk about how riding fixed gear helps you with your pedal stroke and the benefits it has for your overall cycling posture and technique.
We really enjoyed speaking with Colleen and hope you enjoy the podcast! Check out the links below with references to our interview.
Pickle Juice www.picklepower.com
FFWD USA www.ffwdusa.com
Pressure Positive Company www.pressurepositive.com
VibraCool www.buzzyhelps.com
Jakroo www.jakroo.com
Lactigo www.lactigo.com
Podium Sports, LLC www.podiumsports.org
