Cari Higgins

Cari Higgins

Career Highlights

• National Championship Experience: 11-time USA Cycling National Track Champion,
  team sprint, Madison, Points Race, Time Trial, Team Pursuit, 2010, Carson, California; omnium and sprint, 2009, Carson, California; 500m., Keirin, Match Sprint, Team Sprint, 2008, Carson, California
• Elected USAC Athlete Trustee, 2009
• 1st place — 2010 Tulsa Tough Ride and Race, criterium, Tulsa, Oklahoma
• 1st place — 2008 Giro d'Grafton, criterium, Grafton, Wisconsin
• 2nd place — 2010 USA Cycling National Track Championships, Individual Pursuit, Scratch Race, Flying Lap, Carson, California
• 2nd place — 2009 Pan American Championships, Scratch, Chihuahua, Mexico
• 3rd place — 2010 USA Cycling National Track Championships, Eliminations, Carson, California
• 3rd place — 2010 Tour of America's Dairyland, road race, Various places in Wisconsin
• 3rd place — 2010 Tucson Bicycle Classic, road race, Tucson, Arizona
• 3rd place — 2009 Pan American Championships, Keirin, Sprints, 500m, Chihuahua, Mexico
• 4th place — 2010 Tour of America's Dairyland, criterium, Various places in Wisconsin

Points of Interest

• Given how much time she spends on the road, there's routine and order that helps iron out the travel kinks. Still, there are still some things that Cari is loathe to do, like packing and unpacking her bikes.

Personal

Cari Higgins raced her first "real bike race," a stage race in Taos, N.M., in the fall of 2005, a few months after getting married. It must have gone well since her husband, Greg, convinced her that if she liked bike racing, she would love track so she signed up for a beginner clinic in the spring of 2006.
 
By the end of June that same year, she was taking part in a National Team Sprint Camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., and was, according to her, "in way over her head." She was working 60 hours a week; traveling three-to-four days a week for work; running on treadmills in various hotels across the country to stay fit; and hurrying home every Friday night so that she and Greg could be weekend warrior athletes. Then she rode a track bike and her life changed drastically. She went from designer suits to dirty sweats, from vague workouts to rigorous training routines, and from traveling around the country for work to traveling around the world to race. The only constant has been the support of her husband and their dog.
 
Cari is primarily a track racer who has won 11 national titles in various track events, but she also races on the road when the opportunity arises and has left a mark there as well. Before bike racing, Cari played Division I soccer in the SEC at the University of Alabama, where she earned a degree in biology.
 
She started the Flatiron Flyers Junior Cycling Project, a Boulder-based junior cycling team with 25 riders, to develop junior riders and empower them with the same opportunities that have opened up for her. That group is on hiatus for 2011 as Cari focuses her energy on the 2012 Olympics.