“Wherever you go, you’ll always come across Catalans,” she assures me. And I believe her. Cycling has allowed her to meet her best friends and people from all over—in her hometown and far beyond. Even in New Zealand. At one competition, she made friends with some Belgians, and three years later she ran into them again, but in another country and at another race. This is the magic of cycling, according to Ada Xinxó.

Forty-five years old, with Sabadell stamped into her skin and a passion involving two wheels and a great desire to put her legs to work. Browsing her Instagram account, I see that she defines herself with a phrase saying that she’s saving the contemplative life for another day. When I speak with her, she confirms what I had already suspected she meant: “I don’t know how to sit still. Even when I’m on holiday, I have to go on one adventure or another.”

Excellent, I think. We’re dealing with yet another case of extreme dynamism. Let’s see if we can learn something.

Ada takes part in MTB races (or mountain-bike races—because these days we want everything in acronym form), both long-distance and ultra-distance, as well as stage races here and there. For those of us who are only humbly beginning to enter this underworld, that means races of 70 to 120 kilometres for long-distance events and 500 to 1,000 kilometres for ultra-distance events. Not to mention stage races. I’m fainting.

For me, the most curious thing is discovering how this passion began. Ada hasn’t always devoted herself to it. She was a company executive secretary, and one day she said enough was enough. She moved into the world of cycling, which she recognized as her passion after the age of 30, and held positions in bike shops, as a cycling guide, and in online sports stores. Once the Covid-19 pandemic had ended—or at least come under control—she returned to working as a cycling guide, for both road and gravel cycling, mainly for tourists eager to absorb the beauty of the landscapes of southern Europe.

But why cycling? And, even more so, why at 27 or 28? “I wanted to change the unhealthy life I was leading,” she says. “Working, going out partying at weekends, smoking…” She set herself the goal of reshaping her habits and started running, but she could barely breathe. I sympathize, Ada. Later, she tried cycling, and she liked it. That experience became a healthy activity that also had a strong social element and took her to places she had never been before. To top it all off, one day—and almost without meaning to—she was amazed after cycling 80 kilometres. Then she saw it clearly and started signing up for races.

Holding back her laughter, she adds that she went from going to bed at 5 a.m. to getting up at 6 a.m. to go cycling. What a plot twist, Ada—I have to admit it. “I was very clumsy as a child,” she confides. Apparently, she had tried many sports as extracurricular activities, but none of them really convinced her. However, during the holidays, she and her cousins got around by bike. As an adult, she tried it again, and it suited her perfectly. Partly because she also rode through nature for a while, which is always good for you.

Before asking her about Salssa (no, she hasn’t tried a pouch yet), I try to explore the relationship she maintains between nutrition and sport. She leaves me speechless when, without any particular fuss, she says, “I’m very much the type to eat whatever I feel like and try to do so in a balanced way.” She doesn’t overthink it, which, in fact, doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me at all. To each their own!

To finish, I turn to a typical question that suddenly seems mysterious to me: could you be happy without exercising? “No. I need to move,” she declares, in a mix of enthusiasm, energy, and liveliness.

It’s no surprise they call her “Ada non-stop.”