'Turning my head made me feel dizzy, but I could still race indoors' – how virtual racing helped a TT record holder after an unusual diagnosis

Until this summer, Alice Lethbridge could count on one hand the number of times she rode outdoors in the previous 18 months, and still have two fingers left over.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to ride her bike on the roads – quite the opposite, actually – her body just wouldn’t let her.

The 41-year-old, a former 100-mile and 12-hour British time trial record holder, was competing in the East Cleveland Classic in spring 2024 when she showed the first symptoms of thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition that compresses the arteries between her ribs and collarbone, and left her with numb hands and nausea.

“I just couldn’t be in the bunch,” she tells Cycling Weekly. “It was making me feel very dizzy turning my head outside... I started to feel like maybe I was going to vomit.”

Later that summer, her hands got so worryingly cold she decided to see a doctor. The diagnosis took almost a year, but the realisation she had to stop riding outdoors was immediate. Lethbridge turned instead to her indoor trainer, and, in the face of adversity, spun her way into her “fittest ever” shape.

“I could ride on a trainer because you don’t have to turn your head to look over your shoulder,” she explains.

“I kept thinking it was going to be short term, then the treatment just kept getting delayed, so I said to myself, ‘Why don’t you just focus on indoor racing for now?’ I guess I flipped it: I prioritised indoor racing, and then saw if the outdoor racing could happen.”

Fortunately, Lethbridge, a biology teacher by trade, was no stranger to racing indoors. She joined Zwift in the lockdown of 2020, and within two years, made her debut for Great Britain at the UCI Cycling Esports World Championships.

Dogged by the symptoms of her condition, she began training up to 20 hours a week during the school holidays, or 10-12 in term time. Often she'd wake up at 5am to complete a turbo session before work.

“Last summer, I would say, I was at my fittest ever, which was incredibly frustrating to be stuck indoors and not be able to race outdoors with it,” she says.

“I switched to become a bit smarter with the training, and look for different ways to keep endurance decent without doing the traditional long weekend rides.”

For Lethbridge, that included higher intensity intervals, and joining group rides on Zwift and MyWhoosh with the FemmeCycle Collab community she helped expand. “I needed to find something that acted as a substitute for being with a team outside,” she says. “That’s what has kept me really motivated throughout all this time being stuck indoors.”

The racing, too, proved a huge success. Thanks to her consistency, Lethbridge was able to raise enough prize money on MyWhoosh to put towards physio treatment for her condition, something she now describes as “a massively welcome bonus”.

As for longer-term treatment, however, that's still up in the air. Lethbridge was able to return to outdoor riding this summer thanks to a round of botox injections that paralysed the affected muscles. “Unfortunately it’s worn off now, so I’m back indoors,” she says.

The doctors have suggested trying a second round of injections, something they have never prescribed before. If it all goes to plan, Lethbridge is hopeful she’ll be back on the roads for longer, enjoying the breeze, the sun, and the outdoor racing with which she first fell in love. “But I’ll still use the indoor training because it’s just so much more efficient around work,” she says.

Lethbridge's advice to anyone struggling to find the motivation to ride indoors is simple: join a team. “Not being around club mates regularly or racing team-mates is the biggest challenge for me,” she says.

“If you’ve signed up and said, ‘Yeah I’m going to race with the team in this event,’ it’s the same as telling your friends, ‘I’m going to turn up for the ride outside’.

In fact, she adds, “It’s even easier than racing outdoors – you just click a link and you’re in.”