Episode #27: Leah Kirchmann

After over 15 years at the sport of cycling and ten years racing professionally, Leah is still very much in love with the sport saying, “I love that the freedom you get from riding a bicycle.  I'm free to go explore anywhere in the world, anywhere there’s a road.  I can go to the mountains.  I can go find beautiful places.  I can go fast and push myself.  I really just love cycling for that.”   For those of you not familiar with cycling training and racing, this is saying a lot.  Success in the sport requires punishing training and a sometimes-unforgiving demand on the body. An alternate on the 2012 Olympic team, Leah dug deep and committed to earning a spot on the 2016 team, focusing on closing the gaps in any weak areas.  She narrowed in on nutrition, sport psychology, and physiology and took every opportunity to be on her time trial bike (this involves painful training efforts) and to work on climbing.  Six-months out from the 2016 games, she took a risk.  She moved to a new country and changed up her coach and her team to race against the best every day.  The risk paid off; she made the team and had a great Olympic experience in 2016. Leah’s favorite quote is from Viktor Frankl, “everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way.”  To learn how Leah is the living embodiment of this quote, please join us for our conversation with Leah Kirchmann, trailblazer, Olympian, professional athlete, and hero.