Sarah Lamb - PBMA Board Member and Nerd

In the world of cycling, I’m a race mechanic with Mavic SSC, SRAM NRS, and Cannondale p/b Cyclocrossworld.com. I’m also a mentor with Network for Advancing Athletes, which is a nonprofit organization that mentors and empowers women through sport. As a race mechanic, I work for Neutral Support at events all over the country. As a NAA mentor, I help plan and facilitate women’s clinics in coordination with major industry events like the Mike Nosco Memorial Ride in California.

​Outside of cycling, the long-story-short version is: I’m a huge nerd.

Santa Claus brought me my first two-wheeler when I was about four years old, and I’ve been riding ever since. I graduated from Huffys to road bikes sometime around my freshman year of high school, and started working in a shop when I was 15. Somewhere along the line, someone told me “no, girls don’t do that” and I’ve been proving them wrong ever since.

In the ten(ish) years that I’ve been a race mechanic, I’ve been really fortunate to work with some of the most talented and least judgmental people in our industry. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. It’s important to me to do whatever I can to give back to this community that has given me so much, especially to do whatever I can to make cycling and cycling mechanics more accessible to women.

I’d like to see our industry overall be more encouraging of diversity. It seems pretty inclusive right now, but that’s after being in it for more than a decade; to a newbie, I think it’s still pretty intimidating and the barriers to entry are still really high. There’s a lot of awesome grass-roots stuff happening right now to get more people involved in cycling, but it’s going to take a lot of organizations (like PBMA) and industry leaders working together with each other and with the people on the front lines (athletes, mechanics, etc.) to really affect change for the entire industry.