Remembering feminist cycling celebrity and friend: Julie Lockhart

On Friday, October 11, all of cycling, and especially women’s cycling, and particularly master’s women’s cycling, lost the one-of-a-kind Julie Lockhart. I knew her as a fellow Northeast Bike Club member, teammate, riding buddy and friend.

Julie Lockhart was famous in the cycling world. She wasn’t a pro racer. She wasn’t the fastest on the course. She was, however, a multiple cyclocross national champion in her age group (65+), and also a multi-time women’s world champion, the last time in 2019 at age 78. Julie made her mark on cycling, cyclocross racing and women’s racing by showing the world that:

• It’s never too late to throw yourself into something new and challenging
• being active and competitive in your 60s and 70s is doable and fun
• Showing up isn’t half the battle; it’s the whole battle
• if they don’t have a category for you, keep racing anyway– they’ll make one!

FYI: most amateur bike races (road, mountain and cyclocross) offer master’s categories– age groups like 30+, 40+, 50+, 60+. For men, there are loads of categories, but until recently, there was often only a women’s 40+ category. Julie helped change that. How? By showing up and competing in race after race, and then qualifying for nationals. Take a look at the categories for cross nationals in 2006:

Let’s compare it to Julie’s last year of racing, 2019:

Now, Julie didn’t manage this shift single-handedly, but she did inspire lots of folks to keep racing or come back out of race retirement and rejoin the weekend warriors. Someone has to be willing to be the first in a category of one. That was Julie. In so many ways.

If you want to know what Julie was like in a race, check out this 2010 story from Bicycling Magazine about the 2008 Cyclocross Nationals women’s 40+ race, where then 67-year-old Julie and her friend/rival Nancy Brown, 66, went head-to-head in the 65+ category. Even though she got injured during the race, she persisted and went on to win.

Julie’s racing stats are prodigious: if you look here at her crossresults.com record, you’ll see that she was active from 2006 through 2019. And by active, I mean VERY active– she averaged 26 cross races a year. That’s a lot. I mean A LOT.

Back in the mid/late 2000s, I raced with Julie on the road, in the woods, and in a couple of cyclocross races. We were two of three women in a first-timer category for a mountain bike race in Brialee CT. I finished first (my one and only time, but hey — a win is a win) and Julie finished third. I must say, off-road riding was not her strongest suit. But Julie rode and raced all the time, and she had fitness for days.

However, what most of us who knew her remember and will miss is her enthusiasm for every part and every member of the cycling community. She cheered on the Cub juniors during their races, and was on a first-name and hugging basis with the elite riders. She was a sought-after interview subject, and happily talked with reporters, cycling newbies, indeed anyone who came her way.

In fact, once when I was with friends spectating at a cross race outside Northampton, MA, she stopped in the middle of her race to say hi to us and chat about the day! We assured her that we’d be there after she finished to catch up, so she resumed pedaling down the course.

If Julie were here to tell me how to end this dedication to her, she’d say something like “just get out there and do it!” Pondering complexity, second-guessing oneself, waiting for conditions to be just right: none of these were spaces Julie inhabited as a cyclist. She embraced all the experiences (injuries and illnesses included) living and riding as her inimitable self. We will miss you, Julie. Godspeed, and keep the rubber side down.