HEIDI FRANZ
Today is a typical spring day in Seattle. It’s raining. It’s past 3pm and so far my ‘work day’ has consisted of a few social media posts, mediocre video editing, and a few phone calls. None of these things have actually involved a bicycle, though I will eventually set up my trainer and ride on Zwift - but arguably it won’t be the most important thing I do today. Being on a team looks a bit different these days and rather than racing obligations, I have an obligation to my smartphone.
Whether we choose to admit it or not, social media has become a sudden, in-yourface part of an athlete’s job. It may not have been that way a couple of decades ago, but it’s certainly become an essential part of our sport in terms of how we market ourselves as individual athletes and how our teams attract audiences and sponsorships. This has always been the case especially in the world of women’s cycling. Having a presence online is almost essential to your survival in the sport. It becomes your agency, when little to no one can afford to have an actual agent. From the beginning, we have to know how to market ourselves and our abilities. Pure talent gets noticed more often in men’s cycling but for women there’s more to the story. These days you could even be hired by a team just because of the audiences you captivate on social media. Those last two sentences make me cringe and want to punch a pillow, but they may ring especially true in the days of covid-19, with never ending quarantines and stay-home orders. The exponential infection rate of the virus seems to mirror the demand of my social media obligations, but it doesn’t do any good to pout about it while the rest of the world tries to make the most of what tools we have available, even if that involves broadcasting footage of yourself suffering to no end on the turbo in your basement, or hosting multiple Instagram ‘takeovers’. If you do follow me on social media, I warn you - my mediocre baking skills and my new house cat make plenty of appearances. I also can’t promise that those moving boxes in my living room will be gone any time soon.
Consolidating two humans’ worth of bike parts and tools when Ikea is closed is no easy task. But in the grand scheme of things, I am lucky - so incredibly lucky - that this has essentially become my job, with some bike riding to supplement. My team has been incredible throughout this period, and our management is working hard to ensure we are taken care of and remain active through other channels.
When it comes to actual bike riding, I’m happy to report that for the time being I am enjoying it for what it is. Of course, I will need to be ready for future calls to staging, whenever that may be. There are ebbs and flows of motivation and feelings of impending doom, but I challenged myself to remember why I chose the bicycle in the first place. I wasn’t looking for success, a lean body, numbers to count or Strava QOMs either. I just enjoyed moving through the world at a speed that still allowed me to notice and appreciate what was passing me by.
The photo I’ve included here is a bit abstract - it’s called ‘Pedaling across the Interstate-90 Bridge’. My graduating thesis project was about movement, speed and observation. I basically took along a disposable film camera everywhere I went on a bike for a year and documented it all. The speed on the ground is a speed that resonates with my pace of thought and observation. More often than not these days, I don’t want to think any more and I just pedal faster. If that earns me a few Strava QOMs in the process... I won’t object.
“My graduating thesis project was about movement, speed and observation. I basically took along a disposable film camera everywhere I went on a bike”