Stars Award winner Tyler Clare
We asked Tyler, our latest Stars Award winner, about how he got into cycling and his progress to winning a silver medal in the Scottish Best All Rounder Junior championship. This is what he had to say.
Tyler got his first road bike in 2016 when he was 11. He was interested in cycling as this was his dad’s hobby. When he got his first road bike his dad took him out a few times before tackling his first sportive which was the Kingussie bikathon, which he really enjoyed. He wasn’t taking cycling seriously at this point and was only getting on his bike every other week. He swapped his road bike for a mountain bike but he rarely picked it up during the winter. He cycled every few weeks in the summer until 2020 when this changed. He used lockdown as an opportunity to ride more often and to pick up his fitness.
Living next to Daviot Woods, Tyler was doing more off-road riding as there were so many options on the forest tracks and trails there. He started to see progress with his fitness riding every few days, and then saved up to get a road bike towards the end of summer 2020. At this point he was doing most of his training on Zwift as he was still young and his parents weren’t keen on him training outside on his own. This was the safest and best option. He used Zwift through the winter helping him improve his fitness massively, consequently getting faster than his dad. In spring 2021 he got his first part time job and was able to upgrade his road bike. His parents also began to allow him to go further afield by myself.
One of the ride leaders from Inverness Cycle Club invited him to one of their development rides on a Monday evening. He joined them and felt very welcome. Tyler then began to ride with their Saturday group which was usually around 60 to 70 miles including a cafe stop. He felt this helped his fitness massively as he was riding with people that were faster than himself. He would push himself much more. This was the catalyst to take cycling more seriously and he began training every other day.
He got into racing in the summer of this year, and quite recently started competing in local time trials. His first race was on the 10 mile Croachy course south of Inverness, He used his normal road bike with no special time trial equipment and got a time of 26 minutes 23 seconds, finishing mid table among all the categories. He was very happy. He was hooked and bought himself a 2nd hand time trial bike.
His current road bike is a bright orange Orbea Orca with Shimano 105 groupset. He is currently working at Ticket to Ride bike hire and has gained a full qualification as a bike mechanic. Dad doesn’t need to do the bike maintenance anymore.
The race performance he is most proud of, was achieved at the Ronnie MacDonald 10 mile time trial at Kildary. He finished 2nd junior and 8th overall out of 41 competitors, with a time of 24 minutes 14 seconds which was instrumental in gaining second place in the Scottish Best All Rounder Junior championship. Whilst he hasn’t won a 1st Junior prize yet he is looking forward to next season and is confident he will further improve.
His ambitions would be to progress in cycling and see where things go. He really wants to have a career in any aspect of cycling, even if that’s continuing with being a bike mechanic.
Tyler is likely to use some of the Stars Award money to improve his training equipment, possibly a power metre so that he can monitor his training and he’ll also keep money aside for his racing expenses.
He expressed his gratitude for the award and associated prize money and was very complimentary about the work HiVelo are doing to support young riders.
