Lauren De Crescenzo has proven she is fast and fit, on both paved surfaces and rock-strewn odysseys. Now as one of 15 new women among the 70-rider field of the Life Time Grand Prix, she’s working on her technical talents in order to contend in four of the mountain bike events among the seven-race series.
The 2021 Unbound Gravel champion, and runner-up last year, is In her third season at Cinch Cycling with a calendar dominated with gravel events, in the US and abroad. Unlike the past two years, she has a new approach coming into Emporia, Kansas for another top finish at Unbound, which is “not using racing to build fitness.”
“For 2023, we opted for a different run-in for the first part of the season, so I can be fresher for the second half,” De Crescenzo told Cyclingnews a few days before taking the start line of the opening gravel contest for the Grand Prix.
“The majority of the Life Time races are in the second part of the season, as well as US Gravel Nationals and UCI Worlds. This approach requires me to be on top of my Cinch Cycling training program and can mentally be more challenging, as I’m not using racing to build fitness.”
Last year De Crescenzo had transitioned from a full-time job at the Centers for Disease Control to a full-time job as a pro cyclist. She won a stage race at the Valley of the Sun in Arizona and won the GC title at the Tour of the Gila UCI stage race just prior to Kansas. At Unbound she finished second for elite women, finishing 9 minutes behind new elite women’s winner Sofia Gomez Villafañe in treacherously muddy conditions.
Last year at Unbound she said the field was noticeably “stacked”. It was the first year of the Grand Prix, which had accepted applications from a large number of world-class mountain bike riders, like Venezuelan Olympian Villafañe, Commonwealth Games bronze medalist Haley Smith of Canada and others. Villafañe went on to win Unbound and Smith the overall Grand Prix title.
“Within the team, we now refer to gravel as ‘super cycling’, where the best from every discipline meet on equal ground. I’m super excited to take on the Grand Prix this year, even more so with my good friend and teammate Holly Mathews. Both of us are in a similar situation with our road backgrounds, learning off-road skills as we go along,” she confirmed, happy to have added The Factor Lando XC to her racing arsenal. “Taking on this whole new discipline has been a challenge, but it turns out MTBing isn’t as scary as I once…
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