Adventure Riding with Leah Kirchmann
Posted By Gravel Union
On the 20th March 2019
Riding with Leah Kirchmann is always an adventure. The Olympian and Team Sunweb member has won some of the biggest races in women’s cycling and been Canadian champion several times over. Week in and week out she competes with the fastest ladies in the sport on the World Tour. But whenever she gets the chance, she heads off-road.
“Having started as a mountain biker, I feel like I still have this draw to go ride on the trails and on gravel. That is, I think, where it comes from. Just riding those kinds of roads adds an extra element of challenge to your ride,” she says.
Leah has never been one to stick to the asphalt. Back in Winnipeg, where she grew up and first got into riding bikes, the paved routes around the city soon grew stale. “In Canada, we have a lot more gravel roads,” she says. “That’s definitely one way that I have found new places to ride. When you’re in one location, you end up riding the same roads all the time, and you know them by heart. I think that’s why I like going a bit off the beaten path and actually exploring the other places in the area.”
As a professional, Leah’s life involves a ton of travel. That is one of her favourite parts of her job. She is forever seeking out new lanes and trails wherever she is visiting.
One place where she spends a lot of time is Sittard in the Netherlands, where Team Sunweb has its team houses. No one knows the backroads and trails of Limburg better than Leah. “I think one of things I enjoy most is exploring a new place. And if you really, really want to explore a new place, that also includes going off-road,” she says.
For now, her goals are focused on road racing, but many of the gravel events that have become popular in recent years have caught her attention. In 2017, she brought her old mountain-bike skills to Paris-Ancaster, a race run on the roughest lanes, trails, and gravel roads in the farmland around Toronto. It is one of Canada’s oldest and best-attended cycling events.
“That was really fun,” Leah says. “I liked the much more laid-back atmosphere. You know, you had people really racing at the front, but then so many of the participants were just doing it to complete it for a challenge for themselves. That’s totally different from the road scene.”
Don’t think Leah was just there for a lark though. She would never have made it to the Olympics if she wasn’t competitive. She finished second. “I was leading for most of the race and kind of blew up at the end. Maybe I didn’t quite pick my tyre pressure well,” she laughs.
Would she like to race on gravel more in the future? “There’s a long list of events on my bucket list,” she says. “When I am doing less on the road, I would love to pursue them.”
For the moment, she does her gravel riding with thicker tyres on her road bike or on the cross bike she has back home in Canada, but she has heard that her team’s bike sponsor Cervélo will soon be coming out with a gravel bike. She hopes it will be ready before the summer, when Canada will hold its first unofficial gravel championships.
Would her team be okay with her riding that? She laughs. “Umm, I haven’t asked them. Obviously, it would have to fit in.”
Surely, they would not say no to a chance for Leah to add another Canadian champion’s jersey to her collection. This one might not be UCI legal mind you.