Pro Cyclist:Charlotte Backus Turner

Part 1: Becoming a Professional Road Cyclist 

Charlotte Backus Turner is a recently retired professional road cyclist. I became acquainted with Charlotte while looking for high profile cycling influencers on Instagram (@charlottebackus) as potential reviewers of our latest rocker plate, the Delta RS. I reached out to her through her website Exquisite Endurance Coaching and am so happy I did. She is experienced, knowledgeable, kind, easy-going, resilient and service-oriented with a work ethic that is difficult to rival, both on and off the bike.

I will be posting a three part series of blog posts of an exclusive interview I had with Charlotte recently. They include: 

Part 1: Her journey to become a professional road cyclist. 

Part 2: How she has transitioned to competing in other cycling disciplines. 

Part 3: Her role as a cycling coach who serves all comers in an integrative fashion; incorporating her backgrounds in psychology and nutrition alongside her vast knowledge of training protocols tailored to each client’s unique situation and goals.

I hope you are able to glean some inspiration and wisdom from Charlotte’s journey and come away with some resources to help you improve your cycling fitness and experiences. Let’s roll!

VR: What inspired you to pursue a career in professional road cycling?

CHARLOTTE: Oh boy, this goes far back. Ever since I was a kid, I was super competitive, whether it was swimming, I swam for 10 years, or even like violin, I played violin for, I don't know, about 14 years. I'd always been competitive, like in a physical way. I grew up in a really awesome family, very supportive, but one side was into horses, and I didn't really vibe with that as much. I liked more of the adrenaline junkie type stuff, with the endurance and the working out, the cardio aspect. And so I became a daddy’s girl very easily, because my mom was the one into the horses. So my sister was with my mom, and I was with my dad, though both parents supported us greatly. My dad used to be a triathlete. He also used to be a football player. Well, one year, he was like, “Okay, I'm really interested in biking to work.” He wanted to save some money, save some gas, and so he began biking to work. Before long we started accumulating bikes in the garage. And one year, I was like, “Hey, can I bike?” But I actually started riding, since I was like three. Of course, with an older sister, I had to learn faster, because she was already riding without training wheels. So I ended up being on training wheels for half a day, if not a little less. I wanted to get off the training wheels and beat my sister, even though she's two years older than me.

But yeah, a few years later I said, “Hey, Dad, I want to start riding a bike.” And we got this old Schwinn with the shifters on the down tube, and I started riding around our countryside.  I grew up in the country, so I rode just around the dirt roads. So, yeah, I basically learned to ride around there. There's this one hill that I'll never forget, it's just this one mile section out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the country where they paved a road, because there's this one gated community. And so this road had a hill. My dad would bring me over there all the time, and he was my only source to get out there, because being young, being out in the middle of the country, it wasn't really safe to go alone.So every time I got a chance to ride was usually with him on the weekends. And then, yeah, I hated that hill! I really hated that hill! It was short. Well, it wasn't long, but I hated it! I remember crying and being pissed off that I couldn't make it to the top. 

So eventually I grew up and was able to use my dad's clip in shoes.  I stuffed them with tissue paper, and then started clipping in. And soon it was like, “Hey, let's do this local Elephant Rock Ride and start with 35 miles. And so we did 35 miles. I was like, “Well, that's easy!” And so it progressed each year. And then one year we did 100 miles, and that's probably, like the most exciting memory, because that's when I started kind of getting into the racing.

And so I joined Front Rangers, junior cycling. It's a local club in Colorado Springs where they develop young riders. The club did practices, using Carmichael training systems. And so I started really getting competitive, until I was really into it. Eventually I got scouted, because I started entering a lot of the local races and winning them and was very successful. A local junior development team called Prestige approached me. It was all boys, no girls. I was the only girl except one other, but she was short term. Anyway, they approached me saying “Hey, you know, we want to work on getting you developed to be an elite rider.”

I accepted. That was probably by the time I was 17 or so, yeah, full time on that team racing every single week. And there's one year I raced 99 races. 

VR: Wow!

CHARLOTTE: Well, I would drive for an hour, five days a week after school to go practice. It was either doing Meridian or Worlds or team practice. That was the plan. And then on weekends, I would drive around to do races. I would do more than just one race a day. I would do multiple races and then I would also volunteer so I could pay for them. I was always in full swing then and I just kept rising up the ranks. I got a call from Fort Lewis College and was offered a full ride scholarship for road cycling. I was like, “Oh, cool!”. And so that kind of sprouted into my college racing years, but I was actually already a UCI rider. So I was doing a lot of the UCI races like the Colorado Classic, Redlands, Gila and the Cascade Classic, all the really good ones. And that's when I kind of just transitioned into the pro season of road. I basically raced through college as a full-time student/pro athlete and a collegiate athlete.

VR: So were you ranked Cat 1 at the time or Pro?

CHARLOTTE: Yep. Pro. Okay, yeah, I did a lot of guest riding. The last year of my pro road career I raced the Colorado Classic. It was one of my favorites. Unfortunately, it's no longer with us. But I did every single year of that race, and each year, I guest rode. But the final year was the most memorable because USA Cycling was recruiting me. They'd known me for years, mostly because they're based in Colorado. They saw me everywhere, and they wanted to make a long team for collegiate riders, and I was kind of on the top of that list. I was our “A” rider at Fort Lewis College, and so they called me up and said, “Hey, we want you to be on the long team.” So I actually got to be on the long team and do camp with Allen Lim, who owns Skratch Labs, who I've now become really good friends with. I did a lot of training and ended up riding for Lux that year at Colorado, the last year of the Colorado Classic, which was great! So that was kind of the last thing out of my collegiate road season, because then it was 2020, when COVID happened. So, it was a very challenging time.

I ended up getting a contract to be on the 2024 Olympic team. Nicola Crammer is the most amazing director. She is so dedicated to that team [Twenty24: (now Twenty28) a US Olympic development team for women]. I was honestly a little underweight at that time. I mean, that was just how a lot of the mentality around road racing was because, you know, power-to-weight ratio, be light. I wanted to be a climber, yeah. And she would always sit me down and tell me, “You need to gain weight Charlotte!”  And I was hesitant to do so, but then it bit me in the butt because that year I ended up getting COVID. It turned into pneumonia and it took me a good year to recover. So yeah, I decided to step back from road racing.

*Interview edited for clarity. Parts 2 & 3 to follow.