Rider Profile: Bill A part 1

Bill is from Philly and has been down with Landlords from the start. You may remember him as Bill Bikes from here and early Strava. He took some time to put this together. Thanks Bill!

“Life has been going pretty awesome. Working hard traveling a lot trying to stay on top of everything before it spirals out of control.”

“School is pretty amazing. If you would had ever asked me if I’d been in school studying to be an accountant I don’t even know…. or even racing bikes with grand tour winners and Olympians. I was never into sports or anything as a kid. I was into partying getting fucked up doing drugs writing graffiti and doing everything I could to make sure no one liked me. I just rode a dumb track bike around town and didn’t care about anyone but myself. Pretty happy with the way things turned out. Riding has been tight.”

“Last year I was recruited to ride for a collegiate team in Texas. They offered me a place to live for almost nothing and a ton of money to go to school. And i’d never been to Texas. And I realized that no matter how fast you get your only one bad crash away (or getting run over by a philly school bus) from being a vegetable and riding is probably not going to pay the bills so why not.”

“Not having to work and having a bunch of amazing resources at my disposal I had some huge breakthroughs in terms of fitness not so much in terms of results.
I won a few local races and got invited to ride some NRC level stuff but I was constantly getting sick all the time. After some testing in one of the university’s labs I found out I was really pushing the limits on what my body was capable of racing at under 4% body fat and could feel the burn out coming.”

“Getting ready for collegiate nationals last May destroyed me. I got really sick for months and felt like I couldn’t do anything. I was totally useless and ready to go home. I hit a wall at the beginning of April and didn’t really recover till July or August. I needed a long break and it couldn’t had come fast enough. I was super psyched to get home and relax. I moved in with my girl in New York and just chilled out. Twillz hooked me up with a job at NYC Velo and I was beginning to enjoy some unstructured riding with some new friends. Racing and training in New York is bizarre. There are millions of people everywhere all the time but once you get out of the city it is surprisingly nice. I was having a good time getting fat and drunk.”

(R.I.P. SACE IRAK)

Part 2 Coming