I got an email from John in May 2023, enquiring about coaching for the 2024 Trans Am Bike Race (TABR). If you are unfamiliar with the TABR, it is a self-supported event that requires its participants to cycle across America. The route was first developed by the Adventure Cycling Association in 1976. A fellow called Nathan Jones founded the TABR and the first event was held in 2014.

The route runs from the Pacific coast in Astoria, Oregon to the Atlantic coast in Yorktown, Virginia, passing through ten states, and sometimes goes westwards too. It’s a monster of an event: the route is 4,200 miles (6,800 km). Even for a highly experienced cyclist this is a daunting ride – usually about half the field fails to finish.

I was recommended to John by my friend and former client, Mark Croker, whom I coached to his own successful TABR back in 2017. You can read about his remarkable journey from weekend rider to ultra-distance cycling legend here.

Thanks Mark!

Mark on his Trans Am ride.

And so began a year long adventure with John, one I thoroughly enjoyed. I quickly discovered that I was dealing with a serious athlete here, as his FTP climbed up from 130 steadily over the months to top out at 305 watts, just 8 weeks before the start of the TABR.

The training had gone better than I could have hoped. John proved himself to be a super fast responder not just to the sessions but to new ideas too, and his ability to self-coach on the bike grew quickly too. Then, with just about 2 months to go before the race, John became sick with a long, lingering virus that threatened to wipe out all his gains.

However, I knew that the deep base we had created would take longer than a month off the bike to be seriously eroded, and that we needed to be patient. In the end, he got to the start line about 10% off the form he had before the illness struck – but by Eddy, he got the damn thing done! 42 days later, he had completed the TABR… and I have a tear in my eye as i type this..!

Through this process a real kinship developed between us, and I’m proud to call John a friend.

He’s a good man, a gentle man, and I miss our weekly chats.

Over to John!

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Coaching Testimonial / John DeGregory

In 2020 during the tumultuous reality of COVID I found a cycling documentary on Amazon Prime called ‘Inspired To Ride’, chronicling the inaugural 2014 TransAmerica Bike Race… a 4200-mile self-supported bike packing gauntlet across the United States!  At the time I was riding shotgun (pun intended) with my wife teaming with her to shepherd her trajectory to the mountaintop of her dream to become a veterinarian.  In the dog days of a seven-year run to that summit I realized how much I missed the athlete in me and the active lifestyle that point guarded and ran my daily routine. 

As with life, all processes and chapters run their course and I eventually found myself returning to a life that now allowed me to return to self-prioritization as I salivated to dust off the chasse and find the deeply dormant recreational athlete somewhere in my being.  After watching “Inspired to Ride” I had my wife sit down with me and watch it in its entirety.  She knows me well and already had it figured out that I was going to announce this as the masochistic gift I was giving myself per the mandate she gave me to find an epic adventure of which she could reciprocally support.

My routine immediately morphed into a daily smoking of the keyboard and a deep dive into the abyss of the internet to find anything and everything I could on this herculean bike ride and the people that had completed it and lived to talk about it.  I found a blog on the internet called MAMIL Cyclist curated by ultra cyclist and storytelling fiend Mark Croker.  I read his account of the 2017 TransAmerica Bike Race and was enthralled with his descriptive and comedy laden narration of his otherworldly 27-day finish!  Lee Rodgers was the architect of his training and cycling preparation and Mark’s compelling endorsement of this bloke set my destiny in-motion. 

An e-mail inquiry to Lee forever changed my life….

I’ve had a life interspersed and sprinkled with other endurance endeavors but in the pursuit of going long had never hired or inquired about coaching assistance.  The TransAm was on a level far in excess of anything I had previously considered and so it seemed natural to find someone that could effectively and accurately curate a personalized training and preparation program that synced with my lifestyle and the real time daily commitments and priorities that co-existed.  I had NO CLUE how to train or prepare for something like this.  Enter Lee Rodgers….

It’s a certified FACT that Lee is an incredible cycling coach (as his resume substantiates), but telling you that would almost be boring and predictable!  Lee is a TRANSFORMATIVE LIFE COACH!!!  He has a rare and innate ability to prioritize the understanding of the person as a precursor to discovering and fine tuning the athlete and this is so unique and counter contrary to the tangible/data driven and less personalized performance platforms that too often dominate coaching and training approaches.  Lee’s interest in the person creates an ability to optimally personalize training!  Lee’s use of “Rate of Perceived Exertion” (RPE) as an intuitive intensity-based training platform taught me how to instinctively break down tangible training parameters to self-coach myself while out on training rides.  The ability to intuitively understand personal intensity levels allowed me as an athlete to make critical and instinctual adjustments while on the bike and in the moment to maximize performance and to cut loses in the larger framework of staying healthy and progressively fit.  This translated immaculately on the TransAm and was a crowning reason why I was able to ride 4200 miles in 42 days and average 100 miles per day under incredibly oppressive weather conditions and circumstances requiring very critical ride analysis and decision making.

Patience and positive reinforcement are also paramount in Lee’s approach.  Training is a constant roller coaster of ups and downs balancing career, family, relationships and other non-negotiable priorities.  Lee designed workouts that fit like a glove with my daily routine offering as much flexibility as I needed to “balance” my life and, in hindsight, that was a priceless commodity especially working full time as a major time inhibitor.  There were always periodization periods in the training with ample recovery time (to facilitate physiological gains & regeneration) and he knew exactly when to push and when to pull back.  Workouts that I perceived as unsuccessful were always broken down in a positive framework and with an overarching perspective which helped me clearly see red flags and areas of needed improvement while staying positive and motivated to achieve the macro goal of being on the start line in Astoria, Oregon.  I got sick twice in the training process chewing up about six weeks of training time of which three weeks occurred in the month prior to the TransAm.  Lee was able to keep me positively engaged and I was able to peer through a lens that was optimistic and focused on the work I achieved as a buffer to getting through the lost training time.  This perspective was clutch mentally and emotionally and it created an ability for me to let go and accept what I couldn’t control while focusing energy on what I could narrate, always bringing an assuring smile to my face…Lee’s a pretty funny guy by the way!!! 

I cherished the weekly coaching chats as they were always upbeat, positive and multi-faceted in topic.  Training was the main dissemination but life was also highly incorporated into our dialogue and the emotional currency derived from having a coach invested in the things in life driving my training was invaluable and so emotionally enriching!  Lee has become a friend more than a coach and there was not one day in the TransAm that Lee was outside my conscious train of thought as his wisdom and passion for cycling and life continually gave me purpose to keep pedaling toward Yorktown, VA. 

I just accomplished a feat that a little over 300 people in the world have realized and having Lee in tow was one of the most cherished aspects of this journey! Lee would admit that he inherited a Clydesdale weekend warrior client that had some questionable power numbers and a lot of mystery, but Lee’s humanics unlocked my potential and my belief in myself to achieve the unthinkable!  I love this guy so much and couldn’t recommend a more intrinsically calibrated human being to guide your training and your dreaming!  

A salute to Lee Rodgers!  Friend for life and an incredible human being doing what he was meant to do…change lives and curate happiness through kindness and a love of cycling!

John DeGregory – 2024 TransAm Bike Non-Stop Finisher (42D:04H:42M)