It’s mid-afternoon and Emily Willcox is in Richmond Park practising to clip-in. She’s come here, to London’s largest royal park, because it’s wide open and safe. It’s all she sees on Instagram too, videos and videos of cyclists riding expensive bikes in perfect outfits, lapping the park for fun.
Willcox is the kind of person who goes all-in on new skills. Once she’d decided to aim for a half Ironman, she went straight to Sigma Sports to buy a mid-range road bike, with all the extra trimmings. She swapped out the seat, got the handlebars adjusted to her size and took herself off to learn.
"I'm one of these crazy people who, if I have an idea I want to do something, I'm just going to do it," she tells Cycling Weekly.
"Learning how to use cleats is quite daunting. The worst part is when you come up to traffic lights and if you haven't gone in or out yet, you're falling off. You see it all happening, and then you just have to accept it."
But Willcox isn’t your regular beginner-cyclist. She is a 25-year-old fitness and lifestyle influencer. Her content ranges from running videos to the latest lamentation on the state of the London dating scene, all narrated with tongue-in-cheek humour that allows her to cut to the heart of the topic she’s talking about. She could so easily merge into that peloton of seamless Richmond Park riders were it not for her commitment to telling the unbridled truth – however brutal.
"Before you start cycling, there are a few things you should know," Willcox says to her 641,000 Instagram followers over a delicate piano soundtrack.
One of the first lessons Willcox found was that cycling, for the uninitiated, can appear to be a world of codes. In this new world, riding with a backpack was unforgivably uncool and wearing a black helmet a fashion faux pas. God forbid you keep your 'dork disc' attached.
But finding a group to go cycling with, to demystify this coded landscape, was a more daunting task.
An accomplished runner, Willcox has built a business off sport and clubs, in part through the progress it’s allowed her to unlock and in part through her wry commentary of the hotties in attendance. (Didn’t you know? Run clubs are the new dating apps.)
"You have some elitist run clubs that are like, we run fast if you don't run fast then join another run club, but a lot of kind of just normal social run clubs will have different tiers, so you can run in three different pace groups, so you can at least gauge how fast it's going to be," Willcox explains.
"I don't feel like that happens in cycling. You kind of have a route and then it's like, see you on the other side! If you get left behind, there’s no-one coming back for you. I think it's quite hard to just rock up to a cycling club you've never been to and feel like you're welcomed."
Willcox has since found cycling cafes to go to, which offer more low-key group ride outs, but cycling's image problem remains. The stereotype persists: if you’re not a man – a fast man at that – it’s not really for you. I know, because I feel it too.
I first came across Willcox in July 2025, when she released a video of her getting a Specialized Allez Disc Sport bike adjusted to her size.
"Cycling is a white man’s sport," she declared over the top of a video recording her leaving her house. "At least that’s what I would have told you this time last month had you asked me to willingly slide into lycra and straddle a carbon torture device in the name of self improvement."
The video shifts to Willcox on the bike, getting the adjustments made to her handlebars, before she continues: "Truthfully, it’s rare to see black women represented in cycling at all seems, so by default I’m already an icon."
The comments flanking the video roll into the hundreds; messages of support interspersed with laughing emojis and a growing number of other Black women describing their love of cycling:
"We're happy to have you, welcome to the party!" wrote @Lumes.cc. And as Willcox met more people in the cycling community, as her friends felt motivated to dust off their bikes and join her on the road, her perception of the sport changed. A community started to grow.
"I think that we should just all make more of an effort to be kind," Willcox says, now herself on the other side of beginner, at ease with cleats and headed for some cycling in the South African sun. "Especially people with entry level. Everyone has a starting point, and learning something new as an adult is actually scary, and people that think they're elite cyclists should maybe just be nicer and help other people.
"I think cycling is great. I think more people would enjoy it if they realise that you can do it at any level. So I think the other thing is, anyone can actually start this, and it's maybe just about having the permission to try it. Some people need a little push."
