'A bomb went off in my world' – Colin Strickland adapts to restoring collectable autos after stopping racing in 2022

From fixed-gear to gravel, the only bike of interest now for Colin Strickland is a 'townie' cruiser. The Texan went from cycling hobbyist to Red Hook Crit sensation by 2016, and then carved out a top spot in the rising off-road scene in 2019 when he won signature races in Kansas, Unbound Gravel 200, and Iceland, the Rift.

An early trendsetter for a one-rider marketing programme with major brands to earn a living as a gravel cyclist, now called a privateer, Strickland's world came crashing down in 2022.

It was in May, just before a tune-up Texas race for Unbound, that rising gravel star Anna Moriah 'Mo' Wilson was shot and killed. A year and a half later, Kaitlin Armstrong, the former girlfriend of Strickland who had been living with him at the time of the murder, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Wilson and sentenced to 90 years in prison.

"Horrific," was one word Strickland emphasised in a conversation with Cyclingnews about how his life has changed since his gravel racing stopped following the tragedy, and the tumultuous time across many months, and even years later.

"Every aspect of it was just horrific and wasteful. I immediately had no interest in cycling. Period. Everything was burning, like my whole world was on fire. There would have been no bike racing under any circumstances. This would be completely toxic to me, and I couldn't do that."

The large number of sponsors that Strickland worked to include in his off-road programme soon vanished, which "fueled a fire" of uncertainty and culpability of his connection to the circumstances related to Wilson's death. He was ruled out as a suspect during the investigation by the Austin Police Department in 2022, and during the murder trial before a jury in 2023, he provided testimony, as he was the last known person to see Wilson alive before her death.

"The bomb went off in my world, and I'm still recovering from the shell shock of just trying to make sense of it all. I have not made sense of it yet, and I'm not sure I ever will. It brings me so much heartbreak," he said.

He has moved "into a whole different space" away from cycling. His last Unbound Gravel race was in 2021, where he finished fifth in a lead pack of five riders, Ian Boswell taking the win. He said only a few of his former competitors have stayed in touch, Boswell being one of those.

"There's a few people that I made such strong relationships with that we've kept up. Ian Boswell just sent me a message the day before Unbound this year, said he was thinking about me. Pete [Stetina] sends me messages. I went and visited Payson [McElveen] and his partner Nicole last summer, up to Durango. They're sweet, really good humans," Strickland said.

"They've proven to be incredibly strong and not just turn away because things got ugly or scary. It's more challenging to keep in touch. I'm out of their world now."

Strickland has adapted to fresh surroundings and a new career, not even going back to his first career with an environmental consulting firm for habitat protection of endangered species in and around development projects.

"I would survey and commence excavation to see if it led to the potential little orifice feature that led to a cave. I had a permit to collect these endangered species, karst invertebrates [insects and arachnids], and send them to a lab. So I got to do a lot of crawling into really sketchy, hot caves with lots of rattlesnakes," he said about his first career soon after attending University of Texas-Austin.

Now Strickland focuses on automotive restoration for Spartan trailers and collectable vehicles, such as old Mercedes SUVs and trucks with specific turbo diesel engines. He is also restoring a 1915 house and helped his mother purchase a house near his new residence in central Texas.

He has not completely wiped away memories of racing, recalling his sweep of all four stops of the Red Hook Crit in four countries, or the major win at Unbound. This year, he went to a friend's house and watched part of the live broadcast for this year's Unbound Gravel 200.

"Yeah, super fast. A lot of horsepower, a lot of big engines," he stated about the elite fields four years from when he last raced.

"[I have] a different relationship with cycling. I don't train anymore. I've probably done two 'training' rides in the last six months, you know, riding for the sake of riding. I ride around the tiny town I live in almost every day. It's a bit different."