Specialized’s newest race reporter wasn’t hard to pick out of the crowd of journalists and riders at the Amgen Tour of California – just look for the pigtails.
Nine-year-old Ruby Isaac, from Kettering in the UK, was reporting daily for the brand via Facebook Live. Isaac had previous hung out with the Boels-Dolman women’s pro team in South Lake Tahoe while they prepped for the women’s Tour.
Isaac was just seven years old when she first got on a bike, but she jumped into her first cyclocross race a mere month later. Since then, she has started racing road and track and is winning the cycling internet’s heart via her YouTube videos (username: Pocket Rocket Cycling), which show her crushing the rollers, teaching other kids how to shift gears, and performing bike maintenance.
This pint-sized rider’s love for bikes is so huge, Isaac caught the eye of not only Specialized’s marketing team (“She rides rollers better than most adults I’ve seen,” says Specialized PR Manager Katie Sue Gruener), but also World Champion Peter Sagan: Isaac is one of only 67 people he follows on Twitter.
Check out some of Isaac’s skills:
Want to be this good at bikes? We got insider tips from Isaac and her father, Nick.
1. Try really hard.
Isaac started racing at age seven in the U-10 category, and only just turned nine, so she’s still one of the youngest (and smallest) kids out there. When asked how she deals with the nerves that come with racing bigger kids, she says: “Just focus on doing your best and trying your hardest.” Then, in the race, “I just go really fast and right when I get near them [her competitors] I shout and take over.”
2. … And then try again.
In her first cyclocross race, Isaac came in last place and got lapped. She said: “I felt happy that I did it but sad that I wasn’t near the front.” She had a positive attitude, though: “It was still fun that I did have a go.”
Dad Nick says, “We were really proud of her finishing, and just made a big deal of that fact. From then on she caught the bug and wanted to race more.”
The next year, she went back, raced the same course – and won! Now, she consistently finishes within the top-five in her U10 races. “If it were up to her,” says Nick, “she’d race every day.”
3. Invest in gear that won’t hold you back.
Isaac’s road bike is set up with Di2 electronic shifting, because it’s easier for her to hit the shifters with her tiny hands.
After watching Isaac struggle to throw the levers on her bike in a race, Nick went home to Google solutions. He bought Di2 parts second-hand to keep costs down, and hooked them up to a 1x drivetrain on her 24-inch kids’ bike (the front shifter is just disconnected) so that she only has to think about shifting on one side.
“She just has so much more confidence changing gears now, which is a big issue with a lot of kids when they start,” he says. Her bike has other child-friendly parts too, like 135mm cranks (relative to adult crankarms, which tend to run between 165-180mm).
Isaac hits the trainer and offers gear analysis:
4. When it comes to skills, it’s all about progression.
Isaac learned to ride rollers with help from her dad and her brother. “First, she would just ride the rollers and I would just hold the back of her seat,” says Nick. “When she was pedalling quite smooth, I’d just let go of the seat for a little bit, then grab it again. And then it was kind of about letting go of the seat for longer each time.” It took about 45 minutes the first time for Isaac to get the hang of it.
Her number-one advice for riding rollers? “Go really fast and don’t stop pedalling. That’s when you fall off.”
Learn to ride rollers the easy way with this video from our American sister title Bicycling:
5. Do the work…
Isaac totally trains! Nick isn’t a cyclist – Isaac’s grandmother taught her to ride – so he and his daughter relied upon advice from more-experienced riders when she first started attending local club rides for kids.
“One of the pieces of advice that we got is that the best thing for kids to do is not worry about how far you go on your bike, but just try to go really, really fast,” says Nick. “Like even just spending 10 minutes on your bike going really fast. Just enjoy the speed rather than go on lots of very long and slow rides.”
Here’s Isaac’s kid-sized roller workout: • 10-minute warm-up • 1-minute sprint • 2-minute “cool down”
• Repeat for 15-20 minutes.
Isaac does this workout twice a week, in addition to riding at the velodrome a few times a week and “doing laps really, really fast” on the track, says Nick.
Work your way toward this crowd-pleasing move:
6. … And celebrate your successes.
A couple of months ago, Isaac did her longest ride yet: 20 miles. It took her an hour and a half on a closed, one-kilometre track at a local park. (Nick says she’s still too young to ride on the open road).
“I was tired,” says Isaac, “but I finished by going, ‘Yes! I’ve done it!’ I celebrated that I’ve done it, and that I’ve tried really hard.”
Her biggest tip for anyone doing their longest ride ever? “Keep going. Just fight through the pain. I would.”
To see pro cycling coverage reach historic levels of cuteness, tune in to Specialized’s Facebook page for clips of Isaac interviewing racers at the Amgen Tour at California. Or check out the YouTube channel Specialized set up for #RaceReporterRuby.
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