CYCLING SANCTUARY - Spokes Magazine

COLUMNS
SPOKESWOMEN by BRENDA RUBY bruby@verizon.net
...a look at women’s cycling issues in the
mid-Atlantic
Georgina Terry – Pioneer for Women’s Cycling
One of my favorite ways to spend a day is out biking
with my friends. Not my women friends, just friends.
Yet, with the exception of one or two men whose
company we unanimously enjoy, it is all women. This
wasn’t a planned thing; over the years it’s just shaped
up to be this way. Yet, we don’t see ourselves as a
women’s riding group rather a group of bikers who
happen to be mostly women.
Do we all ride the same or even have the same
approach to biking? No. We each have strengths and
weaknesses which seem to even themselves out over
the course of a ride; some of us think of it as training,
while others see it more as a way to enjoy the
day. Is it because we need an outlet for our legendary
thousands of extra words uttered each day more than
men? No, generally we’re focused on the next looming
hill (though I’d be lying to say there wasn’t a fair
bit of talking going on at the rest stops). Whatever the
reason, the fact that women often end up cycling sans
men is nothing new.
Just ask Georgena Terry, founder of Terry Precision
Cycles and host of the “Wild Goose Chase” ride held
this past May 3 at Maryland’s Blackwater National
Wildlife Refuge. Billed as a ride for women, this year
was only its second and the event has more than doubled
in size, to over 700 riders, with hundreds more
turned away. Speaking with her a few days before the
ride, her anticipation was clear. “I’m anxious to see all
these people together. It’s terrific – the camaraderie
and everything is just fantastic. It’s going to be great.”
RECUMBENT =
Comfort
PEOPLE ASK US
WHO RIDES RECUMBENTS?
We tell them avid cyclists
overcoming discomfort from a physical
condition, people coming back to cycling
for exercise who want more comfort,
and people that like to be different.
We welcome them all and try to help
them find the recumbent that
will get them out riding.
We’re fighting “oil addiction” with
human powered transportation.
Join the fight – park your car and
ride your bike.
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128A Church St, NW Vienna, VA 22180
703-938-8900
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And when Georgena gets psyched about something,
history shows success can’t be far behind.
In what she bills as a “basement-bred business,” Terry
Precision Cycles was the first and continues to be the
leader in the women’s bike industry designing not
just bikes specific to women’s needs, but saddles, and
clothing as well. “Most people think I started because
I liked riding, but that’s not really the case.”
While Georgena likes riding, logging over 6,000 miles
a year all the while testing Terry products, it was her
interest in mechanical engineering which led her into
building bikes.
“Basically, how do you put the darn thing together
and miter the tubes and do all that kind of stuff.”
Rebuilding a replica of her favorite childhood bike, a
Schwinn, provided interesting bike building lessons.
“There was some wacko stuff going on there, but
good stuff to learn from” referring to how Schwinn
made a small frame by giving it a super high bottom
bracket.
Riding around on a self-made bike attracted a bit of
attention from fellow riders who started coming to
her with specific concerns, asking her to make bikes
for them.
“I found that a lot of people who were approaching
me were women who all had the same complaints—
sore shoulders, stiff neck, sore crotch,” she told
SPOKES. “After I heard enough women saying that, I
realized that there’s got to be something fundamentally
different here.”
That launched Terry into studying body measurements
and determining the fundamental differences
between men’s and women’s structure. With body segments
tending to be proportionately different, shoulders
narrower, and hands smaller, she realized that
“the bicycle industry was building to the bell curve of
men’s heights and proportions and chopping off all
these other women down at the other end. Women
aren’t just short men.”
Terry knew that by designing a bike fit for a woman’s
structure not only would she alleviate a lot of these
common problems among women cyclists but also
create a bike on which women could ride strong
and longer.
“At that point I thought, ‘Why not just design a line of
bikes for women?’ Forget about the men, they’re well
taken care of.” The engineer in her had been lured by
the beauty of building bikes, but the entrepreneurial
spirit was stoked by a few sell-out visits to bike rallies.
“As soon as I set up the bikes, explained the concept,
and people test road them, they wanted to buy one.”
Add to that her ever-present feeling that she just
didn’t belong in a big corporate setting, Georgena
left her job as an engineer for Xerox and has never
looked back.
Fast forward 25 years and Terry’s goal remains the
same: getting women to have more fun cycling. In
Paula Dyba, Georgena Terry, and Liz Robert
1984, creating a company that only catered to women
cyclists probably seemed crazy to others in the industry,
but it turned out to be revolutionary.
Did Georgena realize the enormity of her company
and this mission at the time? “Yes, because I could
look out there and see that no one else was doing it;
they weren’t even close. It just seemed like consumers
were so turned on to the idea of it, so receptive to it,
so ready for it. It was exactly the right time because so
many more people were getting into cycling, especially
women. We’d go to these rallies [in the mid 1980s]
and half the people there were women. This wasn’t a
male-dominated activity at all so it only made sense to
pursue it.”
Terry notes that feeding into the perfect timing were
the successes of women racers like Sue Novara Reber
and Connie Carpenter who were paving the way for
women who wanted to get into racing.
24 June 2009