Ireland’s new track star Lydia Gurley has revealed her fitness was so bad after an injury to her foot that she could only do 10 minutes on the turbo while in university in the UK. And it was perhaps that injury that lead her into track cycling - or at least cycling, in the first place.
By Brian Canty
Bronze medallist from the UCI Track World Cup in Cali, Colombia, at the weekend Lydia Gurley has revealed how her fitness was so bad when she first started cycling that she could only ride 10 minutes on a turbo trainer .
The 32-year old Athenry woman created her own bit of history on Saturday when she became only the second Irish woman to medal at major meeting on the track after Caroline Ryan.
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And she did so with some style, taking a lap with two others in the women’s 10k scratch race before latching onto the tail-end of the bunch and staying there until the finish.
“For the lap I was waiting, waiting, waiting for the right time for David (Muntaner, coach) to tell me to go. When he said so I put the head down and didn't look back.
“I got a good gap and felt I could it but it was coming to the end of the race so the group was starting to gear up for the sprint.
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“That made the final quarter of a lap to catch the bunch very painful,” she explained.
It’s a great story that she only joined the Irish track team last year but even better by virtue of the fact she’s had it anything but easy up until now.
She broke a bone in her foot while studying in Birmingham (2011-2015) and after getting over that she took up cycling.
Initially a triathlete she wasn’t long realising that her heart lay in the adrenaline of racing on the boards and it was at a university championships event where she first fell in love with it.
“The injury was a break of my second metatarsal, more of a runner’s injury but a combination of poor footwear, poor strength and bad luck (caused it).
“In some ways I ways I was lucky; the MRI indicated I had the start of a stress fracture in four of my toes.
“And as any athlete can appreciate, it was a difficult time and after three months with time in a boot and crutches I had to build back up my time on the bike, 10 minutes a day, followed by 15 minutes.
“It was a long, slow and painful process,” she revealed.
Now she’s going to the World Championships in Hong Kong in April and will head back to her base in Majorca, shelve the PhD for the time being and put all the eggs into the track basket.
And who would bet against another result there?
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