DREAM SHIFTS TO TWO WHEELS Former star runner Mike Woods revives Olympic quest on bicycle
Former elite runner’s Olympic dream revived with switch to cycling
Mike Woods still wants to go to the Olympics. On two wheels, though, not two feet.
Put the Tour de France on his amended list of career goals, too.
The 26-year-old Ottawa athlete was once one of Canada’s top middle-distance runners. In the span of a month in 2005, he set national junior records for the mile (3:57.48) and 3,000 metres (7:58.04) and won the 1,500 metres of the Pan American junior championships. He was in the top 50 in the world.
“I thought, and I imagine anybody else that was following my career thought, that running was what I was going to be doing for the next 10 years at least,” Woods says.
Not even close, as it turned out. Woods was overtraining, racing too much and practising sloppy diet habits — “just not doing everything that an athlete at that level should be doing, and things really started to fall apart.”
Falling apart translated into three stress fractures of the navicular bone in his left foot. Surgery in 2008 and 2010 didn’t solve the problem. “It was awful,” he says. A 2008 graduate from the University of Michigan, which had granted him a full track scholarship, Woods started looking for jobs and entertaining the idea he would no longer be an elite athlete.
About that time, however, he began borrowing — stealing, really — his father Barry’s recreational bike for crosstraining. Friends with cycling backgrounds were impressed enough to encourage him to enter Ottawa-area races.
Now, still super-competitive and confident in his ability as an endurance athlete, he continues to want to see how far he can go in cycling. The bar is set high.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t have these high expectations right off the bat,” Woods says. “I did want to see if I could get on a team that competed at the Tour de France or make it at the Olympic level.
“Those two goals are goals of mine now, and they’re way more realistic than they were when I started, but they’re still lofty goals and it’s still going to be a really tough process in terms of achieving them.”
Woods rode last year for Stevens Racing, based at The Cyclery bike shop in Old Ottawa South, and strong results led to a spot on the national team for the 2012 Tour de Beauce. His performance there, in turn, led to this year’s gig with Quebec-based GarneauQuebecor, which has named Woods and Kanata’s Alex Cataford to its entry for the inaugural Tour of Alberta, a six-day, 800-kilometre event starting next Tuesday at Edmonton.
A week after the Sept. 8 finale in Calgary, Woods will compete for the Canadian National Team in WorldTour races at Montreal and Quebec City.
Between them, Woods will be face to face and wheel to wheel with some big-name cyclists. Also riding in Alberta are 2011 Tour de France winner Cadel Evans of Australia, Slovakia’s Peter Sagan and 2012 Giro d’Italia champion Ryder Hesjedal of Victoria. Spain’s Alberto Contador, who won the 2007 Tour de France and 2012 Vuelta a España, but lost 2010 Tour and 2011 Giro titles because of doping, will ride in Quebec.
“Based off the way my training has been going and based off my abilities, I’m more excited as opposed to scared,” Woods says. “Obviously it’s going to be the hardest bike race I’ve ever done, but it’s also going to be a good measuring stick and a good opportunity to showcase my ability against some of the best guys in the world.”
At 26, though, Woods is an “old” cycling prospect, and he needs more experience racing on two wheels.
In a technical sense, he knows he must develop and maintain a smoother pedal stroke and enhance the leg strength that is key to time trials, admittedly the weakest aspect of his riding.
On the plus side, he has previously displayed what it takes to succeed in track and cross-country.
“The one advantage that I do have is that there are a lot of running and cycling, and I did run at a professional level, I did run at an elite level,” Woods says.
“And, despite the fact that cycling is so new from the tactics perspective and a couple of other aspects, the same principles apply: You still have to suffer a tonne.
“That’s one of my skill sets. There’s no hiding in a 1,500-metre race, a crosscountry race. You have to know how to suffer, and I think that’s one of my strongest assets as a cyclist. When things get really tough in a bike race, I’m often still around.”
Besides Woods and Cataford, the Canadian under-23 time trial champion who turns 20 on Sept. 1, the Tour of Alberta also includes Gatineau’s Jean-Sébastien Perron, 27, and Derrick St. John, 36. Stevens Racing members, they will compete for the national team.
For inspiration, Woods can also think about Svein Tuft. The 36-year-old from Langley, B.C., this year became the oldest Tour de France rookie of the modern era.
Tuft received the symbolic “Lanterne Rouge” as the last racer to complete the tour, but he still crossed the finish line in Paris. A year ago, Tuft was Woods’ teammate in the Tour de Beauce.
“I was really lucky to be on that team with him,” Woods says. “He’s a really interesting guy, and he has kind of proven that you can kind of get into the sport late in the game and still have success.”