For Megan Guarnier, holding a top position in the peloton while powering up the 16% gradients of the Manayunk Wall five times in the Philadelphia Cycling Classic was the easy part. She had already spent the last five years scaling a mountain of loss and grief while raising two young boys.
"Momming to two boys is a full-time, exhausting position! So actually coming to a bike race like this is a bit of a vacation," Guarnier tells Cyclingnews after the race.
"Waking up at 5:00 a.m. to go race our bikes – that's easy!"
Ten years ago, Guarnier was on top of the cycling world, having won prestigious events like the Giro d'Italia and Tour of California. She landed podiums in La Flèche Wallonne and Trofeo Alfredo Binda, narrowly missing one in the Tour of Flanders, and was the first overall winner of the UCI Women's WorldTour.
She was the US national champion and represented her country in the Olympic Games. And, of course, she won a somewhat different edition of the Philly Classic, too. At each step, her husband Billy Crane was her biggest supporter. She credited him for convincing her to quit her day job and pursue cycling full time.
In 2018, Guarnier announced she was going to retire, go back to school and start a family. She planned to keep a toe in the sport as a mentor for the Tibco women's team. However, those ambitions fell away when Crane was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
"Yeah, so directly after I retired, we welcomed my little boy. And directly when he was born, my husband was diagnosed terminal," Guarnier tells Cyclingnews after finishing 10th in the Philadelphia Cycling Classic.
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"We only got about a year with him after that. So there was the grief process, and then we had my second little boy."
Cancer took Crane in May of 2021, leaving Guarnier to raise her son Ned and his little brother Theodore while navigating the unimaginable. Eventually, her old rim-brake bike became a vehicle for finding a way through it.
"My friend got me back out on the bike. I wasn't riding at all through that whole process, just staying fit," Guarnier said. "I got back out on the bike and found another part of myself that I had been missing for quite a bit of time."
Soon, Guarnier was back in the sport, working with the CCB Kenetik women's development team.
Megan Guarnier won the last Philadelphia Cycling Classic in 2016 (Image credit: Sean Robinson/Velofocus)
"Then when [team manager] Tim [Mitchell] called me up and asked me to work for the team, I was like, 'I don't know, Tim, I haven't been in bike racing, haven't really been on bikes'," she explained.
Even so, her knowledge and deep insights proved to be valuable for the young team. She planned to be in the team car for Philly and not on the start line, but having just been with them for their training camp in Spain, Guarnier decided to fill an open spot on the team.
"The spot opened up, and I'm like, Tim's in the car, and I'm a little bit extra in the car, so why not get on the bike if I can help them?", she said.
"I can help them be a little more insightful - just the mentality of how to tackle each lap. Because I've done it, I know how it feels, and I know where the important points are and how to mentally handle that.
"Sometimes [it's better] being able to directly show them on the bike - because the car is in the caravan, in the back, and they don't really know what's happening."
Guarnier showed no signs that she's been away from competition for the better part of eight years, and was right near the front on the first ascent of the Manayunk Wall - the very place she won the last edition of this race.
"A lot has changed!" she said when asked how it felt to be back. "The equipment's changed – everybody makes fun of me for my rim brakes! It's of a different era, as am I.
"It was super fun. The crowds out there were unbelievable," Guarnier said. "I was really excited to see how much this has grown. All along the course, there were people going up the Wall. Just the energy out there was awesome. And it wasn't even the finish line this year. So to have that many people on all of the hills, yeah, it was a lot of fun."
Whether or not the thrill was enough for Guarnier to come out of retirement and race full time remains to be seen.
"One day at a time!" she says. "Being a mom of the best two little boys and having this opportunity to work with this team, again, it's all about having fun and passing my knowledge on to these girls. Because that's the goal with CCB, is to develop these women so they can be the future of the world for the US.
"I'm really excited with the whole thing - we were talking about the ebbs and flows of a race. Somebody says, 'Oh, I'm not feeling good,' and then how you change their mindset so they can feel better, or just focus directly on the next thing that's coming.
"So it's just been a fun process and kind of finding myself again after all the loss and all the change."
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Laura Weislo is a Cyclingnews veteran of 20 years. Having joined in 2006, Laura extensively covered the Operacion Puerto doping scandal, the years-long conflict between the UCI and the Tour de France organisers ASO over the creation of the WorldTour, and the downfall of Lance Armstrong and his lifetime ban for doping. As Managing Editor, Laura coordinates coverage for North American events and global news.
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