Amity Rockwell is a pretty special human being, and knows her way around a cup of coffee as much as a long gravel climb. Check out the latest Rollout video from Easton Cycling titled Headstrong, which takes a closer look inside Amity’s head as she explores the gravel roads around Vancouver, BC.

“Heading into the last event of Easton Overland's 2019 season, Peloton Gravel Mob, we are excited to release Easton Rollout: Headstrong. We sat down with Amity Rockwell during her trip to Vancouver, BC to talk about what it means to call yourself a professional athlete, how pursuing her true interests created direction in her life, and what stubbornness in the face of the unknown can do to drive you forward.” -Easton Cycling

Photos courtesy @ridegradient / Nicholas Kupiak

In Her Own Words

On hindsight:

It’s funny to look at because obviously once you see a certain amount of success, it’s easy to look back and say that was the right choice or that was the obvious choice if this is where you wanted to be. At the time it felt like perhaps that was a dumb choice or not the most sensible choice. I left college early, I took a next-to-minimum wage job making coffee, which turned out to be a great thing for me and it turned into something. It was so much more than I thought it was at the time.

On training:

That's all anybody ever says about me. "Amity rides a lot. Amity rides way too much. Amity rides more than anybody else I know." Anybody who rides bikes knows how it is though. No matter how much you’re riding, you always think, “I can ride more. I could have ridden yesterday. There was still daylight left. I could have taken it that much farther.” And I still do that. I was like that with running. I think it’s the mentality that makes successful athletes is that you’re never doing enough.

On barriers: 

It was hard to find teachers in the sport. It was hard to find people who weren’t just talented fast dudes who don’t necessarily have the time or the patience to do that for you. Luckily I did have some close friends that helped me out and honestly it was a lot of just putting my head down and doing the same horrible technical descent 10 times in a row until I was like, “Hey, I actually kind of enjoyed that.” It was a lot of that and then the more I ride not on pavement, I’m still constantly going through that, I’m still pushing my comfort level.

Mentally, I think I broke through a lot of that with running. I kind of learned how to suffer and enjoy the suffering. You learn to like that when you do it enough times and you start to gravitate towards things that ask that of you.

On advocacy:

The main thing to do about it is advocacy. I’m definitely at a point where I’m starting to feel a bit of a responsibility to use where I am to encourage more women to be out there. It’s not an obligation but naturally you want more people to race against, more people to join me at these things. Advocacy is huge and I don’t think it falls solely on women to promote women’s cycling and I think that’s where a lot of the problem is – men are like, “Well, if women want more women on bikes then women should get more women on bikes” but all the women are pretty tired already.

On women in gravel racing:

I think then it encourages people who talk about the race to talk about women in more of an equal fashion: “These people raced the exact same race and this is how they did.” Instead of “There was this big race that happened, oh and secondarily there was this race on the side.” Because the races are the same time, the same distance, it’s easier to put them together, not to compare but to hold them in equal standing.

On comfort with the unknown:

There’s no way to have any idea about what’s going to happen, there’s no way to plan for all the situations that are going to arise in 200 miles or 150 miles or however far we’re talking. I think that’s also what pulls me towards gravel is not really knowing and having to kind of mentally be totally fine with that.

On the illusion of “luck”:

I don’t think there’s actually a lot of luck in bike racing. That was a weird contentious thing after I won Kansas, that I was “lucky.” I think that’s damaging, I think it erases a lot of things people like to chalk up to luck – such as not cracking, falling off your bike to many times. A small percentage of that is luck. Not flatting, sure. But maybe it’s having enough mentally left to choose a better line, or maybe it’s going over tire choice the week and running it all out there and seeing what you’re comfortable on and what can handle it. It’s so many things.

On the gravel community:

The community in gravel is truly something else and they’re just good people and they get it. It is a bunch of weirdos that go out on these long rides by themselves. I think especially in the last year the people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and hang out with and ride bikes with and go through these things alongside - that totally surprised me.

On being stubborn:

I’ve always been a stubborn person. It’s funny to phrase it as an overall positive as I think that definitely gets talked about negatively. I think stubbornness is when things get hard, you go harder instead of resting. When things go wrong, believing hard-headedly that you can get past them. That’s a big thing, especially in long races. So much can go wrong. With running, what I loved was that there was so much space to mess up then come back. I think that holds true in cycling as well.

On the evolution of gravel:

Every year it seems like there’s a few new ones and I hope that continues to be the case. As much as I love to come back to the same things every year with a little bit more experience and a little bit more confidence in how they will play out and how I will be able to perform, what’s most exciting is the amount of stuff cropping up that is unlike anything else. I would like to see more events that aren’t just your straightforward gravel events.