elite athlete and cyclist ally stacher changes gears
Ally Stacher has accomplished at lot in her first 27 years on this planet. We’re talking the kind of achievements that make us take a good look at how we spend our 16-18 waking hours each day. One of the best domestiques in the women’s professional peloton, she’s ridden with both Specialized-lululemon and HTC-Highroad competing in the world’s biggest races—including the Giro Rosa, arguably the biggest women’s race of the season, which she finished four times. And now, at the height of her game, Ally has announced that she’s giving up road racing. Her new mission? Racing mountain bikes and cycle cross while she grows her nutrition bar business.
“Running a business and racing are similar monsters,” Ally says. “I feel like running a business is racing in a really cold wet windy race in Belgium with narrow roads and cobbles. You can’t give up. You’re gong to get flat tires and crash but you have to keep going. Bike racing has taught me to never quit.”
She’s definitely applied this discipline in developing her own nutrition bar, Ally’s Bar. The bar was conceived in her kitchen in Asheville, North Carolina, where she spent years tasting and altering the recipe until she found the perfect mix of sweet potato, quinoa and dates. She tested them on her patient husband (who she says prides himself on his contributions over the years) and her Specialized-lululemon teammates for the last two years, and says she also eats them all the time. “I’ll take about 100 bars on the road and crush through them, come home and I still like them,” she says.
“They’re low on the glycemic index so you don’t get peaks and valleys when you eat them. They’re slow burning so they keep you fuelled for exercise, but I don’t want to pigeon hold them as just for athletes. They’re good for a mom dropping her kids off at school; people are telling me they’re putting them in kids’ lunches for a snack. They’re made for people who want real food and who want to know how to pronounce all the ingredients on the ingredient list.”
Ed’s note: none of this is BS. One of these bars recently kept us fueled through a killer trail run, and it tasted great.
In February 2013, Ally got her LLC and began filling initial orders for Ally’s Bar out of her kitchen. She quickly outgrew that space and found a commercial kitchen, but “being a professional bike racer and making bars all the time don’t necessarily go hand in hand,” she says. “I wanted to fill orders because people are naturally loyal, and if you don’t fulfill orders you get a bad rap.”
Cue the hunt for a manufacturer. After a considerable search she landed on one that could fill the rapidly growing orders for Ally’s Bars within her almost 100 per cent organic, gluten- and GMO-free stipulations.
“Now we’re full gas into it,” she says. “I’d like Ally’s Bar to be in all the bike shops across America. We’re in (chain health food store) Earth Fare and hope to grow into Whole Foods, I want to be the title sponsor of a women’s cycling team and give them equal opportunity.”
Giving back to cycling is a big deal for Ally. She comes from what she calls “well-groomed mountain people.” Her mom was a bus driver for the local high school; her Dad retired from the army reserves, spent a stint as a logger and now works for the local power company. A strong work ethic clearly runs in her genes. “Most cyclists come from a bit of wealth, but my parents were like, ‘Yeah, we can’t help you.’ I’m a very lucky rider to get on a good team at an early stage in my career, so I haven’t had to deal with other cyclists have had to. The sport has been good to me. I would hope to have a big enough budget one day to sponsor mountain, road and cross.”
“It’s still bike racing, but it’ll be a big change and transition for sure,” Ally says of her career shift our of road cycling. “I’ve raced mountain bikes before and I raced a stage race in Brazil last fall and won the UCI cross-country race.”
She says the training itself isn’t so different—you know, type of bike and terrain aside. “I leave the rest up to my coach to do whatever he tells me. His name is Colin Izzard. He coaches road and mountain racers, so it’s not anything new for him.”
While mountain biking is killer fun, it’s cycle cross, a 45 to 50 minute race on a course with barriers that you jump over and run-ups like flights of stairs, that’s really getting Ally stoked. “I like to categorize types of fun. Type 3 is more fun when its over, Type 2 is kinda of fun when it’s happening, and cycle cross is Type 1 fun, which is fun the whole time.”
When most of us think about biking down mountains and over barriers we also think about crashing, but Ally says she doesn’t. “I try not to think about it because if you do you probably will crash. I try to turn my brain off. I guess you kinda get into this mental state of pure focus and moving forward and without any fear of negative thoughts.
Ally’s next race is the 24-hour Mountain Bike Marathon Nationals in California, then the Lusten 99er and the Pisgah Stage Race, which is practically in her back yard. “I really want to win (Pisgah). I love the feeling of winning. I love putting my hands in the air. Especially the races when it’s just you and you don’t have to race with a team. I love the girls and the camaraderie but I’m pumped. It’s just so gratifying, it’s all you. Everything came together, your equipment worked, your legs were good, your head was good, but it was a fight to the death the whole time. Second doesn’t feel good. Third doesn’t feel good. Winning feels good.”
“Sometimes I think that because I work super hard on something that everyone else I work with and businesses I deal with will do the same thing, but not so much,” Ally says, laughing.
Translation: while she the discipline she learned as a professional cyclist over to running Ally’s Bar, not everyone else can keep up. “Excuses make me crazy. You don’t make excuses. You own it. I attack things head on. They definitely go hand in hand—being a professional athlete and owning a business—because I might be a little bit of an extremist, but I also get things done. My business partner said, ‘Ally, things don’t happen in the snap of a finger, things take time.’ I was like, ‘Why can’t things happen overnight?’
The pace she keeps is certainly admirable. Waking at 6am feels like over-sleeping to her. She tries to get as much done in the morning as possible, when she’s freshest, then trains. Some days she’ll split her training into two or three sessions, working on Ally’s Bar between them. “I just need to be honest and realistic with my time and not commit myself to a lot of other things. I need to make training and the business a big focus and prioritize.
“I should do training for my brain,” she continues. “I practice yoga and I’m really into reading (Zen Buddhist monk) Thich Nhat Hanh. I guess that’d be brain training. I try to be positive, and he’s into mindful and positive thinking. It’s always being mindful of what I’m doing.”
“You want to be the change you want to see in the world,” she says, quoting Ghandi. “You don’t need to radically accept every situation, but you need to approach every one with a good head on your shoulders, to take a step back and breathe and figure out a solution for the problem without animosity or turmoil. How do I turn every situation into a positive one?”
Get more info about Ally’s Bar on Facebook, and follow Ally on Instagram (look for #RealFoodForRealPeople) and Twitter.
Kate MacLennan is a writer, fast-talker (literally) and our global blog editor. It’s her stance that life is profoundly better spent outside—especially when there’s a board beneath her feet. Join her for the ride on Twitter and Instagram.
