Lincoln South Rotary Club met online on May 15, 2020 and heard from Ashton Lambie. What an amazing individual - what a journey he shared with us.
Listening to Ashton, it seemed that every step along his journey just happened because of where he was at the time. He started his fascination with pedaling with pedal tractor pulls. He happened upon his dad's bicycle and decided to try the bigger wheels and he began to compete in races in the area.
While living in Kansas he found his love for the track. He experienced a grass track where someone literally mowed a track in a field - a grass track. Prior to that he primarily raced on gravel.
(Pictured - Grass Track, Individual Pursuit)
With his love of the track he continued to train and compete working his way to the top of the field. He won the 4 kilometer Individual Pursuit race as an unknown, shocking the other more experienced racers. That landed him a position on the Team Pursuit.
Ashton trains by both riding and gym work with a trainer. He joked about his legs - short, and strong. (They are found on Google!). He said he enjoys the cycling he does on his indoor bike. He uses an app that provides virtual racing - a variety of terrains and also like racing in a group.
He didn't tell us exactly how many bicycles he has but he has a number of them. Each discipline requires a specialized bike and he really enjoys working with manufacturers to customize the various parts on his bikes. The bike costs may range from $6,000 to $30,000.
A message from Clay Ehlers here: Nicki’s notes are great and you can find other Ashton articles on the internet, but allow me to add my two cents and try to put some context to his achievements and the wide range of his talents.
The power and strength necessary to accelerate a bicycle from a standing start up to 40 miles per hour with one gear and no hill to help out is staggering and a testament to Ashton's God-given talent and even more so his commitment to his strength training regimen and owning the mental aspects of pushing your body further than you ever thought you could. Personally in 30,000 miles of riding bicycles I don't think I have ever put that much power into the pedals for any 10 second period let alone to do it for 4 minutes straight. Chasing world records where hundredths of a second are the difference is an amazing way to compete and measure yourself against the world's greatest athletes.
At the other end of his range the accomplishments have fewer people watching but they are no less impressive and require a lot more patience, a lot more planning, epic endurance, and a different sort of grit. To me as an avid recreational cyclist the idea of finishing an hour-long ride at 18 miles per hour is it good goal to have once a week. The idea of riding 18 miles per hour, on average, for 24 hours to complete a 450 mile race is mind-boggling. I even cheat and remove my bathroom breaks and Casey's Pizza time from my averages; this guy does not. Likewise, breakneck speeds on gravel roads around Nebraska and Kansas while competing to win 200 mile races is impressive for both the technical aspects of bicycle handling and the physical efforts of going fast.
They say you don't want to meet your heroes, but I'm pretty glad I got to meet one of mine, virtually, this last week. Even if I have a decade-and-a-half on him he has a lifetime of achievements that I could have never thought to shoot for.
To get a good look at Ashton, review this article (click here).
BIO:
Ashton Lambie was born in Lincoln and graduated from Waverly High School. He has a BA in Music and a BA in Business from Hastings College.
At a young age while doing mini-tractor pulls, Ashton enjoyed pushing the pedals. As he grew up, the wheels got bigger and he moved to bicycles after he discovered his Dad’s 10-speed road bike. He raced in his first 100-mile Century ride at the age of 15. After which, he raced with a road team from Omaha but did not find his love for the track until he raced on a grass track outside of Lawrence, Kansas. From here, the pursuit began for the track. He had previously been racing long-distance gravel races and finished 1st in his age with the Dirty Kanza 200-mile race. While living in Lawrence, he also set a 20-year old record for crossing Kansas. He rode 456 miles in less than 24 hours.
Ashton Lambie is a wild card in the track racing scene who elbowed his way to the top of the discipline, for the most part ignoring the discipline’s long-standing traditions and unwritten rules. He raced around Asian to become more familiar with the sport and proved he had the tenacity and drive to be successful while on the track. He first grabbed the international spotlight after his world-record breaking individual pursuit ride at the Pan American Track Cycling Championships in Aguascalientes, Mexico. This was August of 2018, a mere two years after he began racing the track in 2016. He currently is the National Record holder of the Individual Pursuit as well as a member of the National record holding Team Pursuit. Since those monuments, he has added 2 more World Records, 5 National Titles, a Pan-American Games Gold Medal, and most recently a Silver Medal at the Track Cycling World Championships in Berlin, Germany. Ashton is currently a member of the innovative trade team based in Derby, UK called HUUB/Wattbike P/B VitaCoco. They are currently preparing for the Covid-19 pandemic to subside so they can pursue breaking more world records in Cochabamba, Bolivia hopefully before the end of the year.