What do you think?
Rate this book
The Road Less Taken: Lessons from a Life Spent Cycling
In The Road Less Taken , Kathryn Bertine takes readers through her journey of striving to become a professional cyclist in her mid-30s. Her essays explore the twists and turns on life’s unexpected roads via bicycle, but also the larger meaning of what it means to heed one’s inner compass and search for a personal true north. With her signature wit and humor Bertine’s essays travel far beyond the bike lane, resonating with anyone who has ever dared to try and turn their dreams into a reality.
- GenresCyclingNonfictionSports
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
5 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn Bertine
9 books12 followers Kathryn Bertine is an author, athlete, activist and documentary filmmaker. She retired from professional bike racing in 2017 but remains active in advancing equity for women’s pro cycling.
Off the bike, Bertine is a filmmaker, activist, journalist and author of four nonfiction books, All the Sundays Yet to Come, As Good As Gold, The Road Less Taken and STAND.
From 2006 through 2012, Bertine was a columnist, author and senior editor for ESPN. When she pitched a documentary film on women’s pro cycling to ESPN in 2012, they rejected the proposal. So Bertine decided she would make it herself. After a two-year labor of love and crowdsourcing adventures, in 2014, HALF THE ROAD: The passion, pitfalls and power of women’s professional cycling was released. It won five film festivals, debuted in 16 nations, scored international distribution and successfully brought the hammer down on the corruption and sexism in sports. Half the Road is now available on iTunes, Vimeo, Amazon Prime and DVD. Five years later, she continues to receive royalties on a film ESPN said no one would watch.
As an advocate for equality in women’s sports, Bertine then started the social activism movement Le Tour Entier in an effort to bring parity to women’s professional road cycling, starting with the Tour de France. She and her team succeeded, and women’s field was included in 2014 with the addition of La Course by Tour de France. In 2017, she founded (and currently serves as CEO for) Homestretch Foundation, which provides free housing to female professional athletes struggling with the gender pay gap. Bertine was featured on the cover of Bicycling Magazine and profiled in Outside Magazine for her platforms of implementing change in the world.
As an activist, Bertine continues to serve as a public speaker/lecturer on equality and advocacy. She shares her journey and her message—that through passion, disruption, opportunity and focus, anything is possible and we’re all capable of effecting change—with corporations, universities and other professional outlets.
A native of Bronxville, NY she lives in Tucson, AZ. She holds a BA from Colgate University and an MFA from the University of Arizona and a PhD from The School of Hard Knocks. You can follow her on Twitter: @kathrynbertine @halftheroad @letourentier @HomestretchFdn FB: @KathrynBertine Insta:@Kathryn_Bertine and www.kathrynbertine.com
Off the bike, Bertine is a filmmaker, activist, journalist and author of four nonfiction books, All the Sundays Yet to Come, As Good As Gold, The Road Less Taken and STAND.
From 2006 through 2012, Bertine was a columnist, author and senior editor for ESPN. When she pitched a documentary film on women’s pro cycling to ESPN in 2012, they rejected the proposal. So Bertine decided she would make it herself. After a two-year labor of love and crowdsourcing adventures, in 2014, HALF THE ROAD: The passion, pitfalls and power of women’s professional cycling was released. It won five film festivals, debuted in 16 nations, scored international distribution and successfully brought the hammer down on the corruption and sexism in sports. Half the Road is now available on iTunes, Vimeo, Amazon Prime and DVD. Five years later, she continues to receive royalties on a film ESPN said no one would watch.
As an advocate for equality in women’s sports, Bertine then started the social activism movement Le Tour Entier in an effort to bring parity to women’s professional road cycling, starting with the Tour de France. She and her team succeeded, and women’s field was included in 2014 with the addition of La Course by Tour de France. In 2017, she founded (and currently serves as CEO for) Homestretch Foundation, which provides free housing to female professional athletes struggling with the gender pay gap. Bertine was featured on the cover of Bicycling Magazine and profiled in Outside Magazine for her platforms of implementing change in the world.
As an activist, Bertine continues to serve as a public speaker/lecturer on equality and advocacy. She shares her journey and her message—that through passion, disruption, opportunity and focus, anything is possible and we’re all capable of effecting change—with corporations, universities and other professional outlets.
A native of Bronxville, NY she lives in Tucson, AZ. She holds a BA from Colgate University and an MFA from the University of Arizona and a PhD from The School of Hard Knocks. You can follow her on Twitter: @kathrynbertine @halftheroad @letourentier @HomestretchFdn FB: @KathrynBertine Insta:@Kathryn_Bertine and www.kathrynbertine.com
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 5, 2024
An important book, despite being written several years ago now. Explores her career as a sports journalist and her attempts at Olympic qualification. More than this though, it highlights the fact that women’s cycling is lagging behind other sports in terms of equality. Whilst recently, (beyond the time of this book) we have seen the Tour De France Femmes and the emergence of grand tours for women, women’s cycling still has a long way to go. She speaks of how many sports including cycling, are heavily reliant on sponsors to run. This brings with it society’s problems at large in terms of equality for all. But as we have seen this year and all throughout women’s cycling, women’s cycling can be just as exciting as the pro men’s, with this year the titanic battle of Demi Vollering and Katarzyna Niewiadoma only coming down to 4 seconds. Overall, an important call for more awareness of how far we have to go before sports can be more accepting and a viable career option for all.
August 30, 2020
As I've mentioned, I am a recreational cyclist. I want to really emphasize the recreational part of that sentence- I ride a few hours a week and at an average speed that might make Kathryn Bertine, author of The Road Less Taken, fall fast asleep. Kathryn is a retired professional cyclist who has twice taken aim at the Olympics. I was really excited to come across her book at the library.
Told in a series of essays, many of which were submitted as articles for ESPN and espnW, Kathryn shares her experiences as a representative of a very small nation (St. Kitts and Nevis) striving to keep up with the monoliths of European teams in the pursuit of Olympic qualifying points. Already in her thirties and slightly later to the sport than her competition, Bertine is determined to succeed. When told she "might" be able to make a break away from the peloton, she explains it this way:
"Might" is all I need to hear. I have built an emotional empire on might, this strange world that yields definitions of both strength and chance, as if it surreptitiously knows they're the same thing. I used to be paralyzed by Mights and Maybes...yet I knew in order to progress, I had to build an empire on might and crown myself the Empress of Maybe. Only then, I finally figured out, could I get where I wanted to go.
This kind of willpower is inspiring. I have never been athletic and I started my own cycling very late in the game, but I can build on might and maybe. I can keep pushing, even if I'll never race with the big girls.
Bertine gives a lot of insight into what the world of women's pro cycling Olympic qualifications are like. She describes lots of travel, home stays (bunking with a family in lieu of a hotel to save money), and she talks a lot of the disparity between women's and men's cycling. When asked what she thinks about Lance Armstrong's cheating, she responds with the names of five female pro cyclists that she says "deserve more attention and discussion than the question of whether Lance cheated." Bertine is a strong fighter for equity in women's cycling, advocating for women's events to be added to the major men's races, fairness in prize payouts and also in base pay, and in greater respect for the women's side of the sport.
When an article in Bicycling Magazine (who really should have known better) came out in 2011 ranking women's cycling's hottest racers, Bertine was aggravated. Not only was it kind of gross, but the article only showed how "hot" these women are while failing to list what awesome athletes they are. Bertine fixed it for them by listing those same women, along with three others she felt should be included: what what really made them outstanding cyclists. She calls it her list of "Watties" (a watt being the unit of measurement for the amount of energy expended in an athletic effort). It is a fantastic list and maybe the best part of the whole book.
Bertine writes with humor and candor. She mentions that she never answers the question of if she has ever crashed out loud. She will nod her head, but is somewhat superstitious about saying anything in any way that the "gods of jinx" might hear. I can totally understand that!
I really liked this book. I'll leave you with one last bit of inspiration I gained from it:
You don't have to get over your fear in order to do something. It's okay to bring the fear with you. just cut out its tongue first.
Check out more of my reviews at SmartGirlsRead!
www.smartgirlsread.blogspot.com
Told in a series of essays, many of which were submitted as articles for ESPN and espnW, Kathryn shares her experiences as a representative of a very small nation (St. Kitts and Nevis) striving to keep up with the monoliths of European teams in the pursuit of Olympic qualifying points. Already in her thirties and slightly later to the sport than her competition, Bertine is determined to succeed. When told she "might" be able to make a break away from the peloton, she explains it this way:
"Might" is all I need to hear. I have built an emotional empire on might, this strange world that yields definitions of both strength and chance, as if it surreptitiously knows they're the same thing. I used to be paralyzed by Mights and Maybes...yet I knew in order to progress, I had to build an empire on might and crown myself the Empress of Maybe. Only then, I finally figured out, could I get where I wanted to go.
This kind of willpower is inspiring. I have never been athletic and I started my own cycling very late in the game, but I can build on might and maybe. I can keep pushing, even if I'll never race with the big girls.
Bertine gives a lot of insight into what the world of women's pro cycling Olympic qualifications are like. She describes lots of travel, home stays (bunking with a family in lieu of a hotel to save money), and she talks a lot of the disparity between women's and men's cycling. When asked what she thinks about Lance Armstrong's cheating, she responds with the names of five female pro cyclists that she says "deserve more attention and discussion than the question of whether Lance cheated." Bertine is a strong fighter for equity in women's cycling, advocating for women's events to be added to the major men's races, fairness in prize payouts and also in base pay, and in greater respect for the women's side of the sport.
When an article in Bicycling Magazine (who really should have known better) came out in 2011 ranking women's cycling's hottest racers, Bertine was aggravated. Not only was it kind of gross, but the article only showed how "hot" these women are while failing to list what awesome athletes they are. Bertine fixed it for them by listing those same women, along with three others she felt should be included: what what really made them outstanding cyclists. She calls it her list of "Watties" (a watt being the unit of measurement for the amount of energy expended in an athletic effort). It is a fantastic list and maybe the best part of the whole book.
Bertine writes with humor and candor. She mentions that she never answers the question of if she has ever crashed out loud. She will nod her head, but is somewhat superstitious about saying anything in any way that the "gods of jinx" might hear. I can totally understand that!
I really liked this book. I'll leave you with one last bit of inspiration I gained from it:
You don't have to get over your fear in order to do something. It's okay to bring the fear with you. just cut out its tongue first.
Check out more of my reviews at SmartGirlsRead!
www.smartgirlsread.blogspot.com
April 14, 2019
A collection of essays about competitive road cycling, especially as it relates to the state of women's professional cycling. I got less out of this than I did out of Bertine's previous books, both of which felt a bit more cohesive than this did—All the Sundays Yet to Come covered more time and had much more of a narrative (plus, more sparkles...and, if I remember correctly, possibly donkeys and/or chickens), and As Good as Gold had a finite time frame and, again, narrative. There's good material in here, but the repetition makes it feel quite blog-to-book, and I'd have loved to see the story taken out of essays and put into a single narrative. (Better repeat some of the material from previous books than to repeat some of this book's material within this book?)
December 19, 2014
I had just read Road Rash and Ramen Noodles that is a memoir of a relatively young professional road racing cyclist and somewhere I saw something about this book, by this author - I found her author page page that includes links to a description of her attempts to become an Olympic cyclist in 2008.
Having read her long blog post type description of her efforts to qualify for the 2008 Olympics, representing St. Kitts and Nevis, I submitted a suggestion to my local public library that they acquire a copy and to my surprise they did. (I was expecting that they would not be able to get this book, which has a somewhat obscure publisher, from their usual supplier.)
I was disappointed. Part of the disappointment was because I was expecting more of a memoir about her experiences racing, but the book is a collection of essays, mostly published online (I think) - they often repeat the same polemical approach to certain issues that are important to Ms. Bertine. So I ended up reading a book that was not what I expected.
Even so, sometimes one reads a book that isn't what was expected and it can be great. I mostly agree with Ms. Bertine's points (not that it matters in the slightest, I'm just some guy, not anyone who can do anything about her problems with professional cycling) but these essays often cover the same ground, over and over, without much variation. There is some good description of different experiences she had riding but too much "women's cycling needs to be fixed by . . . " sections that are saying the same thing that was covered in the previous essay (and maybe the one before that).
Eventually with 20-30 pages to go, I turned it back to the library.
I do recommend reading her blog entries on the ESPN site, but some of the links on her author page (that I reference above) don't work - however I was able to figure out what the correct URLs are.
Having read her long blog post type description of her efforts to qualify for the 2008 Olympics, representing St. Kitts and Nevis, I submitted a suggestion to my local public library that they acquire a copy and to my surprise they did. (I was expecting that they would not be able to get this book, which has a somewhat obscure publisher, from their usual supplier.)
I was disappointed. Part of the disappointment was because I was expecting more of a memoir about her experiences racing, but the book is a collection of essays, mostly published online (I think) - they often repeat the same polemical approach to certain issues that are important to Ms. Bertine. So I ended up reading a book that was not what I expected.
Even so, sometimes one reads a book that isn't what was expected and it can be great. I mostly agree with Ms. Bertine's points (not that it matters in the slightest, I'm just some guy, not anyone who can do anything about her problems with professional cycling) but these essays often cover the same ground, over and over, without much variation. There is some good description of different experiences she had riding but too much "women's cycling needs to be fixed by . . . " sections that are saying the same thing that was covered in the previous essay (and maybe the one before that).
Eventually with 20-30 pages to go, I turned it back to the library.
I do recommend reading her blog entries on the ESPN site, but some of the links on her author page (that I reference above) don't work - however I was able to figure out what the correct URLs are.
January 3, 2015
Full disclosure: I am a big fan of Kathryn Bertine. I loved her book "As Good as Gold" and since then have stalked (er, followed) her on social media. I love her passion for cycling and for women's sports. I love the wit in her writing. And I love some of the bigger life lessons she finds on the bike and shares with readers.
As a collection of essays and previous work, sometimes there is repetition. (At a certain point, if you're not familiar with cycling or her story you know what the UCI is and that she has dual citizenship to race for St. Kitts and Nevis.) But her aim is true and her heart is open and how can you not love a girl who loves waffles as much as I love pancakes?
I loved her sentiment that "any journey that unhinges the control panel of our soul and lets us take a hard look at our own wiring is ultimately a worthwhile quest." I loved the essays that included her dad and especially the lesson of DNF vs. DNS. It allowed me to look at my own various life projects and realize even if they didn't finish quite the right way, or at all, that starting them was the most important thing. Engagement. Doing after you've learned to believe.
Thanks for paving the road, Kathryn.
As a collection of essays and previous work, sometimes there is repetition. (At a certain point, if you're not familiar with cycling or her story you know what the UCI is and that she has dual citizenship to race for St. Kitts and Nevis.) But her aim is true and her heart is open and how can you not love a girl who loves waffles as much as I love pancakes?
I loved her sentiment that "any journey that unhinges the control panel of our soul and lets us take a hard look at our own wiring is ultimately a worthwhile quest." I loved the essays that included her dad and especially the lesson of DNF vs. DNS. It allowed me to look at my own various life projects and realize even if they didn't finish quite the right way, or at all, that starting them was the most important thing. Engagement. Doing after you've learned to believe.
Thanks for paving the road, Kathryn.
June 22, 2016
I felt the need to read a cycling book in advance of watching the Tour de France this summer. Bertine’s book wasn’t quite what I expected. Instead of a narrative of her second attempt to reach the Olympics, this is a mishmash of articles and essays, not all specifically on that topic. You do read about the hardships of competing with the professional teams in woman’s road cycling, and how the sport is still having growing pains (and how far behind it is from the men’s tours). I enjoyed the stories of racing, and even the stories of her life. I did find it quite repetitive in the grousing, not that what she complains about doesn’t deserve it, but these are essays, obviously not written to be compiled together, and Bertine really has some trouble with some entities with regularity, such as the governing body of her sport and Fedex. This provides a picture of what it is like being not quite at the top of a sport with limited financial backing, becoming better as the rules (and time) make it harder.
February 1, 2015
Great read for all... but especially for athletes!
This is a great book for not only cyclists, but for all athletes and those passionate about equality among sports.
Kathryn uses a great blend of humor, lessons learned, thought provoking discussions and stories to bring to light the topic of inequality in cycling and other sports.
This is a great book for not only cyclists, but for all athletes and those passionate about equality among sports.
Kathryn uses a great blend of humor, lessons learned, thought provoking discussions and stories to bring to light the topic of inequality in cycling and other sports.
Read
November 16, 2016strong writing from the almost-olympian in essays related to women's professional cycling, women's sports, and her life. If you want more about the women's professional cycling stuff, check out her documentary "Half the road" it will make you angry :)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews