Joss Lowden | Woman of the hour

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In this episode, we chat to Joss Lowden. Joss is a relatively recent convert to cycling. As she explains in this interview, she didn’t even really like cycling for quite some time, only getting into it after suffering a running injury. A cycling trip to Mallorca in 2016 made her rethink her dislike of the sport. And not long after she bought a TT bike on eBay and promptly broke the local TT course record just a couple of days later.

Since then, the now 33-year-old has spells with Aprire Bicycles-HSS Hire, Storey Racing, and Brother-Fusion before joining her current team, Drops-Le Col part way through 2019. Despite her obvious talent, Joss has had a fair share of challenges since she started racing. She essentially wrote off her 2018 season with a shoulder injury after a crash at the Tour de Yorkshire and then broke both her shoulder and elbow the following year at the Tour of California. On top of that, Joss’ team Drops lost a whole year of racing due to Covid.

When she has had opportunities to race, however, Joss’ talent has been obvious. In the National Road Series in 2019, for example, she was second in the Klondike Grand Prix and finished 3rd in the Lincoln Grand Prix. She then went one better, winning the South Coast Classic in July. That year she was also 7th in the time trial and the national road championships, won the national 10-mile championship and then finished the season with a memorable bronze in the team time trial at the world

Last year she finished 12th overall in the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana and won the national 25-mile championship. And this season has started well. She finished 11th at the Healthy Ageing Tour and then, just as I was writing this intro, she finished 5th at the hilly Brabantse Pijl race in Belgium.

Joss also made waves back in February when she unofficially broke the women’s hour record, when she went 153m further than the official women's Hour Record held by Italian Vittoria Bussi.

This interview was recorded in two parts, which we've stitched together in (hopefully) seamless fashion. In the first half, Joss recounts some of the key moments in her cycling journey so far, including her introduction to cycling, her injury challenges, her bronze medal at the world championships in Yorkshire and a disappointing 2020. In the second half, she discusses her plans and motivation for breaking the world hour record later this year.

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