“There’s a lot of gatekeeping in cycling, a lot of ‘If you don’t look like a typical cyclist, you’re not welcome on our group ride’ and ‘If you can’t keep up, there’s no place for you’,” Marley Blonsky paints a damning picture of a cycling scene awash with judgement and petty rules. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.” The 36-year-old knows that change is possible because for the past five years she has been blazing a trail for plus-sized riders.
Blonsky grew up in Dallas, Texas and has fond childhood memories of long, joy-filled days pedalling around her local neighbourhood. After college, she moved to Seattle, Washington for work, and cycling took a back seat. “My life was fairly sedentary right through my 20s,” she says, “but after getting divorced [in 2013] I moved to a part of Seattle where driving a car just didn’t make sense.”
Blonsky bought a bike and within a few weeks had not only embraced the convenience of commuting but was also riding for fun at weekends and had even begun planning bike-packing adventures. It was at this point she began hitting barriers. “I didn’t have a rain jacket or cycling kit that fitted me. As I hit more and more of these frustration points, I was thinking, ‘I’m not the only fat person out here – this must affect others too’.”
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