Wylie’s sweating buckets on her spin bike, suffering through a vicious ride over the Tuscan hills without leaving her bedroom. She’s convinced: this is the most physically tested she’s ever been.
Forgetting your sweat towel will do that to you.
Forgetting it on the bed just out of reach increases the torture.
Wylie’s no whiner. As a former ski racer, she knows bodily misery. Ski racing is signing up to be constantly cold. The ice baths she submerges in these days are nothing compared to barreling down a mountain at ninety miles an hour, wind howling, temps hovering at nine degrees, wearing a skintight Spyder suit (there’s no fur lining in those babies), fingers so frozen they could snap like brittle twigs. Lips cracked and bleeding at the hint of a smile. Cheeks simultaneously wind and sunburned. Throw in period cramps, just for giggles.
But this? It’s worse, somehow. She dips her cheek to her shoulder, but she’s only in her faded blue sports bra, so there’s no shirt to absorb the sweat. Moisture meets moisture. She emits a fierce growl into her bedroom.
The towel is so close, she could almost lean out of her bike seat and pinch it with her fingertips. Or swiftly dismount to grab it. But if she does that, she’ll lose her lead, disappointing her boyfriend, Dan. He’s tracking her stats like a hawk as they count down to the fitness competition in Berlin next Saturday. It’s the Big Daddy of BodyFittest contests and comes with enough prize money to improve their lives: paying down Wylie’s student loans, helping Dan set up his business as a fitness trainer.
“Now for the long climb,” says the CycleTron instructor, Claudine Potts, her tush hovering over her seat. “Dig deep. We’re in the thick of it now. Four minutes. You’ve got this.”
At forty-eight, Claudine Potts is also a former skier, widely considered one of the best downhill racers ever, with five Olympic gold medals to her name. CycleTron has splashed images of her superfit bod and weather-whipped face across billboards with a message that reads like a dare: Train with a GOAT.
Greatest of all time. But that’s not why Wylie rides with Claudine three mornings a week.
On the bike, Wylie, signed in as ArtsyFartsy26, taps into another level of endurance, her legs firing, her hips acting as great, powerful pistons. Back when she was still skiing, she separated herself from the pack with a grittiness to ski fast through the last ten seconds of a two-minute downhill race, when fatigue smashed at her like a wall.
It’s this grit she calls on now.
Wylie might have snatched Claudine’s GOAT title, was headed that way. By ten years old she was skiing double black diamonds. But at the age of seventeen, when she was competing at the Junior Olympics—an important precursor to making the U.S. Ski Team—she abruptly quit the sport to go to college.
More specifically, art school.
By tossing away her talent and years of training, a rift opened between Wylie and her mom, one that’s only deepened in the last few years.
“Release the tension in your shoulders,” Claudine barks from the screen, giving her own a microshake to demonstrate.
Some riders choose Claudine because she’s old-school, straightforward and direct. No flowery language, no rainbows-and-unicorns nonsense about accepting yourself as you are, no pumping music playlists or choreography.
This no-BS rigor isn’t why Wylie rides with Claudine, but she automatically follows the directions: looser grip, relaxed shoulders. Growing up, Wylie was constantly coached, every minute of her life calibrated to wring out the best results. Doing what she’s told feels more natural than making her own choices. It’s why she and Dan were such a good fit when they met at a BodyFittest studio three years ago. He provides the structure she craves; she executes.
Another rider, SheSpins4Lyfe, overtakes her, and admiration sprouts in Wylie’s chest. Get it, girl. That level of fitness is truly impressive.
Then she remembers that the goal is to dominate—and being the best here translates to being the best elsewhere—so she reclaims her lead like she’s shimmying through a concert crowd on her way to the bathroom. Sorry. Excuse me. I’ll just pass on the left.
She’s not aggressive, not really. She was graced with elite-athlete genes, but she’s never cared to win for winning’s sake. She wins to keep people happy with her.
And by “people,” she means her mom. Wylie’s a twenty-six-year-old grown woman who can’t stop fantasizing about winning in Berlin and telling her mom: I did it. First place, the best.
She lifts her gaze from the touch screen to her bedroom window. The sky is a pot of boiling, darkened clouds, the tiny snowflakes a trail of steam. She takes a sharp intake of breath. Funny how a form of precipitation triggers so many memories—and not of building snowmen and drinking hot cocoa and enjoying a surprise day off from school.
In her world, snow meant going fast. Faster than a car on a highway.
And faster than she’s going now. “C’mon,” she shouts, regathering her focus, pumping herself up.
“Three minutes left,” Claudine announces, her hazel eyes blazing. “Crank that resistance. Climb. Push it!”
Wylie activates inner beast mode. Gone is her sweatiness, her achiness—even the nagging loneliness disappears. The end of her braid whips across her neck.
Some riders choose Claudine Potts because, just as her rating suggests—8.75 on the difficulty meter—she leads the most grueling rides. A puke-in-the-wastebasket, gasping-for-breath, I-thought-I-was-in-shape, fifty-five-minute bender. But oh, the endorphin high.
But these reasons aren’t why Wylie rides with Claudine.
Her own reason for choosing Claudine: it’s a way to see someone who can’t see her. Because Claudine Potts isn’t just a GOAT. She’s Wylie’s former ski coach.
And the mom she hasn’t spoken to in two years.
