10 Questions With... Avery Wilson

by David Kirkpatrick, Features Editor

Avery Wilson is the youngest member of the emerging Wilson cycling dynasty, racing with NCVC in both Junior and Cat 4 races.  His first year racing in Senior races brought many challenges and successes.  Like his brother Nate, he has lofty goals and the dedication to achieve them. 

10 Questions With... Avery Wilson

(GamJams) 1. If a parent was on the fence about getting his or her kid involved in cycling, what would you say to convince that parent?  What has being a cyclist done to help you become a better person?

(Avery Wilson) Well I think that the decision to take up the sport should be the racer’s choice not the parent, because cycling takes more drive than tae-kwan-do or whatever people my age do. But if there is a kid or teenager who becomes interested in it and there parents don’t want them to take it up as a sport for safety reasons, or time management, or expenses, or whatever, then I think that they should look into it more before they cut the opportunity off from their child, by going to a race or meeting with someone who does know about the sport, because very few people in the average school community know what about racing. The truth is that racing and strong commitment to consistent training pretty much always results in better safety awareness (riding your bike in traffic before you can even drive) and time management (from having more responsibilities, and having to make a commitment to training (or recovery) every day and limit frivolous stuff). But also, the hard part is that it is expensive to get equipment and transportation as well as registration fees, and that you will have very little success for the first few years in most cases even if you are will to make the time and money commitment.

(GJ) 2. Of all the people I've ridden with, I'm always impressed with where you put yourself in the pack and how you ride among others.  How did you figure out how to read the play like that?

(AW) This is all important stuff to racing, is putting yourself in the right place to always have opportunities. Bike handling, positioning, technique, and everything about racing that doesn’t include fitness is just as important as the fitness part. I learned a lot of it this year. It was my first full season of senior races as well as junior races so I had a lot more racing volume than usual. In terms of strength of cat 4s, I am in the lower half definitely just from being smaller than everyone. This season I was like 5’5” and 125lbs the whole time, so most of the cat 4s that I lined up against had probably 50 lbs more of muscle than me on average. You have to learn how to keep your position even if some people can’t even see you when you are in your drops (this happened to me sometimes with people looking right over me, because I get very low, and then they just move right into me), and be aggressive when necessary but in a controlled manner (because no one wants to be the person yelling at everybody to “hold their line” (whatever that even means... does anyone actually know???).  Juniors definitely get yelled at the most in senior races.  During the Reston crit this year, someone yelled at a junior that he was gonna cut his head off. But I can still go fast at puny watts, which is by focusing on pedaling stroke and being efficient at high cadence, having good core strength (doing core workouts all year round is IMPORTANT), getting a good position on my bike (dial it in) – basically saving energy and increasing efficiency wherever possible.  Learning how to race. Pierre (Pelletier) helps me with all this stuff, being real savvy as a racer, this is important. Also Pierre is super funny. As a young junior in senior races (unless you are a noob like Steven Kendall) you probably have naturally less strength than all the other competitors, but it’s great because you get the opportunity to learn how to do all these things.  In the pro ranks, everyone’s body is fine tuned and they all ride with perfect form on their bike and have perfect pack skills. A good example of this was at this one crit I did this year where I got 5th. All season I was basically a mid-pack finisher, but this one race my awareness finally paid off, and after doing nothing for the first 5 laps I slipped off the front into a 4 person break (one person came across later) that gained about 40 seconds and stayed away for the remaining 15 laps or something. I got last out of the break because I just wasn’t very strong compared to the other guys in it, but I was able to contribute and make a lot of pulls.  The men in the breakaway may have been pulling through at 350 watts and I may have been pulling through at 260, but all of my pulls were just as fast as anyone else’s because I could save energy in all these different ways that they weren’t thinking about.  But if I want to make a feel-good excuse I guess I could say that I was tired from the junior race earlier in the morning. Also I should say that my teammate, Matt Dockins, got 3rd in that race. So if you are forced to learn basics first by getting dropped over and over until you learn to save your energy better, then you have less to focus on later when your growth catches up to your aspirations.

(GJ) 3. You're world famous for being well dressed and stylish on the bike at all times.  Are there any hard and fast rules for putting together a fresh look or is it pretty much just talent?  Also, what will the correct sock height be for next year?

(AW) The answer is that I get most of my clothes from my brother and also all my style (if there even is any...). If you’re a pro, it is your job to represent your sponsors and stuff; this includes wearing their uniform (which should be clean and neat) and riding their bike (which should be also clean and run flawlessly). Even on an amateur team it is good to practice this stuff I guess (even if you are a real small time junior it is fun to play dress up is what I mean). I do all my mechanic stuff now that Nathan is gone. I started my mechanic career this summer by trying to build my time trial bike from an ebay frame and various components that I found in the garage. I refused anyone’s help because I wanted to learn it all on my own (but we did have some mechanic books that helped me). It took me 8 hours all in one day to figure it all out (including a trip to Jeff Trinh in Revolution, Clarendon, to fix the bottom bracket after I STRIPPED IT), but now I know how to do all that stuff and when I built up my new, BIGGER road frame about a month ago now, I did it in less than half the time, and it went flawlessly. I do maintenance on my bikes before each and every time I ride them, to make sure that there is no distraction when I train and that training is training, not stop between intervals and fix derailleur time. That is off the topic but that’s just where I took that one... 

(GJ) 4. What other sports do you do, and what non sports stuff are you into?  

(AW) Oh man... I will have to get creative on this one.

I don’t really do any sports that aren’t cycling. I used to be into whitewater kayaking for a couple years, that is actually a pretty cool sport, but you have to do it a lot (just like cycling) and I ran out of time for it. I like cooking actually (probably just because I like eating), and I heard that competitive backyard barbecue is making its emergence as an Olympic sport in 2012 or whenever the next Olympics are. I do art stuff sometimes like drawing, that’s fun... I just finished an oil painting of the finish of the juniors race at Turkey Day in 2008. I also did some music with the band in middle school – we played at the Kennedy Center and could play pretty well sometimes.

This is all important because cycling is about balance, like finding things to enjoy other than cycling, so that you know how to take your mind off your bike when your not on it. I don’t do a lot of stuff with school friends outside of school, so keeping my mind busy is important. I work hard at school and generally get good grades.  Next year will probably be my last year in high school (I’m graduating) although I am 15 this year, but it is only to take time off and pursue something interesting academically – like an internship or something hands-on like that. I want to study Exercise Physiology in college just like my big brother is, and I think that is something like what Susan (Hefler) took in college too. It leads easily into being a coach, which is important even if the only person I ever end up coaching is myself.

(GJ) 5. You're growing up fast, there must be a lot of times when you just wake up stronger than you've ever been and say "cool."  But have there been times when you've had a growth spurt or whatever and the immediate impact was negative?  How did you deal with it?

(AW) Yeah it is nice, I am finally growing now. It happened with Nate too; we start as average sized kids in our grade then everyone gradually gets taller much faster than we are until 10th grade when we start to catch up, and hopefully I will end up at like 6’tall like Nathan. Most of my improvements probably come from the hard training I do.  I do pretty much exactly what Susan tells me to do every day and try to send her all my power files, but there are times when I know I am growing and my power has bigger increases than I expect I guess. I can truly appreciate it though, because I have been dealing with the opposite side of that much more, so far, in my career than not. I started racing as early as I could, at age 10, only a year after my brother started. When I started I was really fat and not athletic at all and had no competitive drive for the first two and a half years, so I just rode around in the circles at races every weekend. But that’s what young racers have to get through: they have to deal with getting last for a few years, and just keep riding, staying positive, and keeping your dreams high. Then, when I was 12 (my third season), I figured out that you could train for the sport so I started training with Susan and by the end of the season I won a race: Juniors Day out 10-12, lapping almost the whole field!! You couldn’t believe how ecstatic I was. All my life I was a loser athletically, and sports just weren’t my place to shine, but then I dedicated myself and worked hard for a few months and it paid off hugely. Last year was my 6th season racing and I had more struggles than ever, because I did a full season of senior races, and it was my first year racing 15-18, but it was still my best season yet because I learned so much.

But back to the question: I just have to do a lot of stretching or else sometimes I get growing cramps, and it makes it really painful to train.

(GJ) 6. What are your long term aspirations for cycling?

(AW) I have big dreams, which is important, because at 15 years old “I have my whole life ahead of me” goes the cliche. I want to be a professional at the highest level that I can.

(GJ) 7. Do your friends at school understand what you're doing with cycling or not so much?

(AW) Maybe I am not the best person to ask that question, but basically they have no idea what I do after school and on weekends... maybe I should tell somebody sometime.

(GJ) 8. You don't have to look real far to find a role model for carving out a successful path in the sport.  What are some of the good and bad things about having such a good rider as your older brother?

(AW) I can really only think of good things!!! The best part is that by being 3 years older than me, he has already been through everything in racing that I am going through, especially because we are developing at almost exactly the same rate (if you’re keeping score at home Nathan WAS a cat 5 at my age though, so technically I’m ahead). When I am devastated by having only bad luck and dnf’s to show for all my hard work, Nathan knows exactly what I’m thinking and he can always make me feel better. Also, as I said before I get all his old cycling clothes. Nathan is very inspiring to me, because if I started cycling alone, I probably would have given up long ago. He has always shown me that there is another notch that he and I can get to.  I hope that someday we will both be professionals, maybe even on the same team like the Schleck brothers, and it has all culminated finally in his last year as a junior to going from a last place 12 year old rider, to a cat 1, seven seasons later through hard work and dreams most of all. Also, he helps keep things in perspective for me. Everyone really looks up to some of the elite teams in this area as the highest level of the sport, and see anything beyond that as intangible super heroes, but Nathan went out to the Cascades 7-day stage race, one of the hardest domestic pro stage races in the US, with a 180 person field, including Tom Zirbel (proven 4th best time trialist in the world at Mendrisio this year!!) and Freddie Rodriguez (so many wins and a second place at Ghent-Wevelgem a few years ago... a race that you can watch on tv!!) and many more people of that caliber. Nathan and one other racer from MABRA, Russ Langley, went. Nathan finished the race despite a strict time cut for each stage, with the Nationals coming up the week after. On the seventh and final stage, an 85 mile circuit race it was full on from the start, going like 30m/h for the whole 85mi, and Nathan finally cracked, and he was in a grupetto suffering the whole day. But he finished the 7th grueling stage in a row and was the only local racer to do so and he is only 18 years old, and still went on to finish 2nd at the nationals road race a few days later. When he came back, he could finally see MABRA where it belonged in a much wider spectrum of racing calibers, and finally got the elusive win he wanted all season at the Tour of Millersburg final stage, his last race before moving out to Colorado. Even though I’m not at that level yet, because I am developing just as he did, even a little faster, and am putting in the same hard work, I know that I can make it there, and getting yelled at by “big men” in cat 4 races doesn’t intimidate me for that reason.

(GJ) 9. If you could win any race in the world, which one would it be and why?

(AW) OH NO!!! I have so much to say to this question but all my answers have already been way too long so I will try to keep it short and to the point even though I know I’m not that articulate sometimes.

I LOVE THE TOUR OF FLANDERS. When I first started real hard training, Susan introduced me to this hill called Hunter Station. I was fat and it was steep and it was a war at 3 m/h for me to get up it every single time, barely able to turn over a 39x25 gear. Two times I even fell into the ditch on the side of the road because I was going so slow. But Susan taught me well and every hill repeat I did on that hill, I did a sprint all the way over the flat to the road sign as hard as I possibly could, even if everyone was done with their hill repeats, waiting for me and watching me (it was pretty much always this way, because I was always the slowest one). Even most of the older kids on the juniors group ride didn’t do a sprint, they just coasted in over the top or turned around early, even though they were so much stronger than me. But I had more determination and since then many of them have given up the sport or are at a lower level than me finally. 

Last year for Christmas I ordered a DVD with the 2008 Tour of Flanders, from World Cycling Productions. I saw steep hills covered in rain and dirt, on poor road surfaces. People at the back had to get off their bikes and run up even though they were slipping and sliding in their cleats up the steep cobbled hills. It reminded me of Hunter Station, but so many more times difficult. Now I think about that race all the time, and use it as motivation when I’m really suffering.

If my body is capable of making it to that level, I would give everything if I had the chance to do that race just once. You have to be aware and smart, have your bike prepared for the conditions, and have excellent bike handling skills at any amount of fatigue. Three preparations that I try to bring to every race at the best of my ability.

(GJ) 10.  Finish the following sentence: "In 12 months I'd like to..."

(AW) Well, as soon as this baby goes up on GamJams, I’m adding it to my resume and sending it out to all the pro teams. My biggest hope is to land a spot on the exclusive Vino 4 Ever team p/b Borat.

I want to get my cat 3 upgrade, in time for Nationals. Everyone probably knows that I really wanted to do this last year, but it didn’t happen. I trained as well as I possibly could have, went to as many races as my parents could tolerate, and my body’s growth just wasn’t at that level yet no matter how much I wanted it. That is the other thing about being a junior (this is probably the only articulate thing I will be able to say the whole interview): you have to be patient, because if you are training as hard as you can and dreaming big, then all you have to do is wait for your body to catch up. 

I think that is a good summary of things.

--

David Kirkpatrick is a Features Editor with GamJams who races for NCVC. He is enjoying growing fame through his blog Flamenco Chuckwagon, and as promoter of the lauded Lost River Classic.

Comments

[PokeTheBear]

Avery rules.

[Dave Kirkpatrick]

"I was fat and it was steep." I have found my epitaph.

[PokeTheBear]

Seriously, I'm gonna be Avery for Halloween. Keep rocking, Avery.

[Jim Wilson]

Jeez, what a great interview, an articulate, self-aware young man. (I didn't look once beforehand.) So many partners, NCVC, Sue Hefler/HPC, Pete Lindeman, NCVC U19 teammates ... Dave Kirkpatrick, the 4's ... Many thanks, Jim

[Susan Hefler]

Avery I am speeechless. Wow. This is a classic. I am going to frame this one and put in my training center. This is as real as the Tour of Flanders. I don't have enough words to say how proud I am to work with an athlete and person (to me they are the same)of your caliber. You may still be "junior" years, but that was the best piece of training literature I have read in some time. Maybe you can help me write my book. I am going to name it " I was fat and it was steep". You never give up. That what makes you and Nate champions.

[Myron Lehtman]

Avery is definitely one of the upcoming stars on the "stars and bars" of NCVC. Our juniors are the future.

[Kathy Allison]

Avery-- you rock!

[Christine]

You could have let it be about standing in the shadows. Instead your own positive attitude turned your brothers success into a springboard for your own. Well said. I can feel the pride oozing from your parents. All best for next season.

[Gino E.]

Great read Avery. I really enjoyed it. Inspiring.

[Peter Swan]

What a great interview, and great family. Most professionals are not as articulate on the sport! Keep up the hard work and you'll make it.

Swanee

[chris schmidt]

I agree ...well done...the sock height question though was that one answered ?

[Aric Line]

Stick with it Avery. I'll be watching you on TV some day. And nobody I know drills it all the way to that sign...except for you.