Cycling Club

GEEKS NO MORE

When Nicole Freedman, ’94, first joined the cycling club for training rides in 1993, she wore running shorts and rode a bent-frame club members could hear approaching.

The following spring Freedman finished second in combined events in the western conference. That summer, she and three Stanford teammates did the grueling, non-stop Race Across America. Now she races full time and trains up to 400 miles per week on her carbon-fiber racer.

Freedman laughs about the Stanford transformation: “It takes people who are on these seemingly successful career paths and turns them into their parents’ worst nightmare.”

Fortunately for the team, which has won back-to-back championships in intercollegiate road racing, the western conference and combined rankings (road, track and mountain bike), it’s a “nightmare” that keeps repeating itself. Among the explanations for that success:

High Analysis: With Art Walker, PhD ’90, as coach ­ his dissertation was on the design and calibration of a gamma ray telescope ­ the club gets serious strategic analysis.

Sure, conditioning is crucial. The team regularly churns up mountainous grades west of campus, repeating the climbs after “an incomplete recovery.” Walker cites the “desire to suffer” as vital and notes, “there are key points in races where selections are made on physical grounds.”

But he adds that tactically smart riding means “to conserve for that moment and to recognize the onset of that moment, so that one can put this undiminished physical system on the line.”

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