Why This Record-Breaking Ultrarunner Can’t Get Enough of Gravel Riding
Late last month, an unsponsored and relatively unknown ultrarunner from Arizona named Taylor Nowlin broke the women’s record for the fastest-known time (FKT) on the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim run. The course takes runners from the Canyon’s South Rim, down to the bottom, up to the North Rim, and back. It’s over 40 miles, with almost 12,000 feet of steep climbing. Nowlin did it in 7 hours and 25 minutes, just days after another runner, Ida Nilsson, smashed the previous record.
Nowlin is also remarkably talented at gravel bike racing, which she picked up earlier this year and mostly uses to, uh, recover from ultras. Here, she talks about her forays into cycling, the similarities between ultrarunning and gravel riding, and how she has already turned heads in an exciting new sport.
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Bicycling: First things first: Congratulations on the FKT.
Taylor Nowlin: Thank you.
BI: How long did it take you to recover from this? What did you reward yourself with?
TN: [Laughing] Oh man, I’m probably still recovering even though it’s been like two weeks. I took a full week off from running, which is super luxurious. Now I’m doing a little bit of cycling just to shake my legs out and get some effort in and get my heart pumping again. [Riding] is a great way to recover and stay active.
BI: How did you get into gravel riding? That seems like a lot added to the training commitments for ultra.
TN: My partner and coach, Nico [Barraza], and I got into it earlier this year. We live in Flagstaff, so we’re surrounded by all these amazing dirt roads. It’s a great complement to ultrarunning because you can recover from a hard running workout on your bike and feel okay. It feels so much better on your body than doing a shake-out run some days. As soon as we made the initial investment in gravel bikes, there was no going back. And then we started racing, which makes it even more fun.
BI: What got you into racing? This is supposed to be a nice, fun complement that’s easier on your body, and you’re like, “No, I’m gonna go enter a race!”
TN: [Laughing] Yeah, I’m always like that: I have to do the most competitive version of something. So I’d probably done two bike rides with a total of less than 100 miles. And then I saw a sign in one of our local bike shops for the Mount Lemmon Gravel Grinder, which is in Oracle, right outside Tucson. And I was like, “We have to do this!” I had very little bicycle fitness and just hopped in.
BI: Then what happened?
TN: So, that race I actually won. [Nowlin won the 40-mile women’s division and finished 10th overall out of 124 starters. – Ed.] Which was a surprise to me, because I am probably the worst technical descender on a bicycle ever. I just happened to have legs from ultrarunning, so I can climb. But I really need to learn how to descend on a bike. I was pretty atrocious. I was probably going like 10 miles per hour.
BI: And you’re already signed up for another one in January, right? The Texas Chainring Massacre?
TN: Yep. I’ll be doing the 100K. I’ve never been to that part of Texas, so I have no idea what to expect. But I’m at least going to have a little more cycling under my belt.
BI: Obviously your fitness transferred well. What else?
TN: When you’re ultrarunning, you develop this pain tolerance and acceptance of being uncomfortable for a really long period of time. You can kind of borrow that to make it through a long bike race. In ultrarunning, I’m accustomed to spending a long time outside and having to eat while doing an endurance sport and training something like 25-plus hours a week. There’s a lot of similarities that help the two sports have a good crossover.
BI: Do you have any other races you might want to do, like Dirty Kanza or Grinduro?
TN: Yeah, Chino Grinder is also here in Arizona. And I would love to get into Dirty Kanza. Of course this all has to fit around my ultrarunning schedule. But bike racing is just so fun. Once you get a taste, it’s really hard to not want to do another one.
BI: What do you like about gravel so much?
TN: It’s so dang fun to move quickly on remote roads. I remember when I first fell in love with ultrarunning, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this sport is able to take me to the most beautiful places and see these areas I never would have seen if I just was hiking.” But when you have a bike, suddenly 200 miles is within your reach. Also, at least in my experience so far, the cycling community is super, super friendly and really welcoming to us. It’s a nice new challenge for someone who is familiar with one sport to get a completely fresh start on something else.
BI: Will you start training for cycling, or will you continue to do it mostly based off your running fitness and training?
TN: I’m going to integrate more cycling into my off-season workouts especially. I really want to develop my technical skill on a bike. I think cycling will always be secondary for me, but I can increase the volume in the off-season and scale it back when I’m in my ultrarunning season.
BI: I’m curious if you feel like running or cycling could be a potential career path.
TN: I don't know. If I have [sponsor] support, that’s awesome, but if not that’s okay, too. At the end of the day, I’m doing it because I enjoy this sport, it makes me feel good, and it connects me with cool people. It’s not about using it to pay my bills.
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