The Women in Orange & Blue
Editors note: Seems like months ago Katie Levie connected about her contributing to this blog with a profile piece on the ladies of KRT. The addition of written profiles to complement our ongoing video profiles is a natural extension of the work we do. Zwiftwatch.tv is excited to promote women's cycling by featuring more profiles on women, but we also love the idea of adding contributors to this blog (click here if you'd like to contribute). With that, here's more from Katie Levie.
The Women in Orange and Blue
KISS Racing Team, Zwift
KISS Racing Team is a mixed gender team and recently expanded its female force, bringing them to about 25% women. The team stands for fair, ethical racing and #Type2Fun. KISS Racing Team (KRT) was founded on the idea of keeping Zwift racing simple, without complicated rules or joining instructions.
Rachael Elliott of Newbury, Berkshire, United Kingdom
Rachael’s life transcends busy. Leadership role in a thriving finance career? Check. Professional violist with the Newbury Symphony Orchestra? Check. Competitive Cyclist? Oh Yeah. In fact, she manages to represent KISS Racing Team (KRT) in her daily Zwift races, and race outside up to twice per week!
How does Rachael fit competitive cycling into her busy life of dual careers and be the fastest female on Zwift? Yes, the fastest--she’s the only ZADA approved female on the entire virtual cycling platform, meaning that her average watts/kilogram was so high at 5 w/kg, she was required to submit proof of her real-world efforts to match those in Zwift.
Outside of Watopia, Racheal made the newspapers for her podium appearance in Paris, after the UEC European Masters Track Championships. Most recently, she was honored at the National Cycling Time Trials Champions’ Ball, where, adorned in red-carpet-ready attire, she received the swanky 2017 Champion’s golden cycling cap.
She attributes her racing success to a high volume of cycling. She utilizes her commute to work for the bulk of her training time, riding twenty-five miles each day along the winding country lanes of Berkshire year-round. Despite the dark, freezing winters.
Rachael is most inspiring in the way she always makes time to help others,
providing training advice to new and experienced Zwifters, and organizing events within the Zwift Community and in cycling committees across the UK. She has a passion for encouraging women to take their cycling to new levels, realizing their unlimited potential in this amazing sport.
Tina Boine-Frankenheim of Düsseldorf, Germany
Tina has always been an athlete. She played field hockey and tennis as a child, and joined a boxing gym in college where she climbed into the ring as a fierce competitor against the mostly male opponents.
In 2013, she was on a hiking trip in Cape Town, South Africa, when she discovered something that crumbled the rocks beneath her.
She felt a lump in her breast. She stood motionless, thinking of her mother and grandmother who had both lost the fight against breast cancer.
Tina didn’t wait. She arranged an appointment with the local specialist that same day. The test results came back quickly—too quickly. It was cancer.
Tina had two young children at the time of her diagnosis and was not going to leave them motherless. After all, she was a fighter—with or without her boxing gloves. She chose to undergo the most radical surgical option, but that removal of tissue led to an even darker discovery. It was an aggressive strain of cancer, and her fight would not end here.
For six months, Tina was treated with chemotherapy. Her body became a stranger. She traveled to countless oncology appointments, while continuing to work at her job. She kept her family close, refusing to let the chemotherapy strip her of being a loving mother and wife, but she lost herself.
Tina slept through the nights, but awoke fatigued, as if her eyes hadn’t been closed at all. She struggled to find the energy for daily tasks. She tried to forge through the debilitating symptoms, but they only got worse. There was no athlete left in her reflection. No Tina in the mirror.
After the chemotherapy had concluded, she tried boxing again, along with other forms of exercise, but the loss of bone density, attributable to the cancer treatment, caused too much pain to continue.
Her brother, Doctor Oliver Boine-Frankenheim, introduced her to Zwift in 2016. In Watopia, Tina slowly regained her fitness with encouraging words and Ride-Ons from fellow Zwifters to keep her pedals turning. On the virtual roads of a beautiful island, she rediscovered the strong, confident woman she had always been--even when her body didn’t feel like her own.
In the 2017, Tina started cycling outdoors, joining group rides and touring on solo adventures. By that summer, she was standing on the podium after her first race, where she scored a second-place win.
Karen Jennings, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom
Karen joined Zwift during its infancy, when the Watopia Hilly Route was the only virtual tarmac available. Back then, riders were also sparse, with only 100 or so Zwifters logged in at the same time. Women were even smaller in numbers; they all knew each other. Karen happily offered to assist with the moderation of a Facebook group for female camaraderie and personal challenges, as it started to grow in membership. The Ride on Ladies tagged their names with ‘ROL’ to easily spot one another in game—a practice now adopted by nearly every Zwift club and racing team.
Although Karen was an early Zwifter, she missed her opportunity to use the infamous burrito power up, which disabled draft effect for riders behind you. According to Jon Mayfield, the burrito was removed from the game since most people simply got rid of the power up, instead of using it for its intended purpose. Karen would have used it. In fact, she says it would have been her favorite perk.
Racing on Zwift in 2015 and 2016 more closely mirrored real-life conditions. According to Karen, riders slowly rolled up to a banner and waited for the race organizer to type out which category could, “Go, Go, Go!” In 2016, Karen’s competitive cycling outside of Zwift took her to new heights, up 17,000 feet along a 226-mile course she had only 18 grueling hours to finish. Not only did she defeat this challenge, she was the only woman to do so. In the same year, she placed as 38th fastest female in the Prudential Ride- London and qualified for the UCI World’s at the Tour of Cambridge.
Even with these grand achievements and the support of the Ride on Ladies, self-doubt crept into the fold. Things were going TOO smoothly, and she worried about getting injured or something else going wrong. She also struggled with the tremendous time commitment required to train for these events. These fears, along with having abdominal surgery, forced Karen to lose some of her cycling progress.
Her love for the bike outside of competitive events brought Karen back to the sport. She hit the trails with her dog, felt the wind in her hair and reminisced about the days before she’d started racing—back when she used to borrow a bicycle in the beginning of her fitness journey. Before that, she didn’t have any hobbies, at least not ones that made her feel so alive.
Today Karen is racing again and loving it, after being invited to join KRT. She’s thrilled to have been given an active role in promoting women's racing, thanks to KRT.
KISS events:
Weekly KISS race events can be found in the Zwift Event Module along with seasonal challenges and race series. KRT continues to develop their racing series with the support of the community and close links with Zwift and will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in Virtual Cycling Racing. More information on these events can be found here: http://kissraces.cc/ and https://zwift.com/events/
About the Author:
Katie Levie is a cancer researcher and Zwift enthusiast in Seattle, Washington. She was invited to join Kiss Racing Team in October of 2017 after expressing her enjoyment of Zwift Academy’s race component. She is now one of the race organizers for KRT.