Maggie Coles-Lyster’s excellent adventure – Canadian Cycling Magazine

It may be the off-season for you, but pros are putting in mega base miles for next season. For Maggie Coles-Lyster, some of those miles included an incredible 10-day trip down the West Coast, from Victoria to Santa Barbara.

In early November, she and three other riders set off on a road/ride trip down the West Coast from Victoria to Santa Barbara for their first proper training block after the off-season. The group consisted of Coles-Lyster, her boyfriend—British gravel pro Joe Laverick, fellow Canadian Riley Pickrell (Israel Premier Tech), and his girlfriend, current German national road champ Franziska Koch (DSM-Firmenich PostNL).

The trip was something that Laverick and Pickrell had been planning for some time.

The 10-day trip began in Victoria and progressed down the West Coast with stops in Ocean Shores, Rockaway Beach, Florence, Roseburg, and O’Brien before entering California. The group continued through Eureka, Fort Bragg, San Francisco, Monterey, and finished in Santa Barbara. Each day featured a mix of cycling and driving, covering varied distances while navigating coastal roads, small towns, and changing weather conditions.

Planned since March

“They started the actual planning for it in March, and by September it was, ‘OK, we’re actually doing this!’” she said. “Although not the best time for weather systems in the Pacific Northwest, we decided at the end of the off-season, our first couple of weeks back training in November was the perfect time to do it that fit in with all of our busy schedules and team requirements.”

The plan was to ride around 280 km each day between booked accommodations.

“It wasn’t true bikepacking—we were staying in a mix of hotels and Airbnbs and had a truck with us so we could split up the days with riding and driving and had some more freedom to choose the best routes,” she said. Hours on the bike each day usually varied between four to six hours, with everyone given the liberty to follow their prescribed training hours and get in the truck early or switch with the driver when needed.

Lousy weather to start

“The first day and a half was through Washington, then we crossed into Oregon. I was still in my off-season for the first two days of the trip, so I took the first two driving shifts, fitting some runs in on the beach,” she said. “The weather was also absolutely horrible for the first six days. Around 5 degrees and…