“Wherever you go, you’ll always find Catalans,” she assures me. And I believe her. Cycling has allowed her to meet her best friends and people from all over the world; at home and far away. Even in New Zealand. In a competition, she made some Belgian friends, and three years later she met them again, but in another country and at another race. This is the magic of cycling, according to Ada Xinxó.
45 years old, with the Sabadell stamp on her skin and a passion that involves two wheels and a strong desire to build leg strength. Browsing her Instagram account, I see that she defines herself with a phrase that says she’s leaving the contemplative life for another day. When I talk to her, I confirm what I already suspected she meant: “that I can’t sit still. Even on vacation, I have to go on one adventure or another.”
Wonderful, I think, we are facing yet another case of extreme dynamism. Let's see if we learn.
Ada competes in MTB races (or mountain biking, since now we also want everything with acronyms), both long-distance and ultra-distance, as well as stage races here and there. This translates, for those of us who are just humbly introducing ourselves to this subculture, into races of 70 to 120 kilometres in the case of long-distance and 500 to 1000 in the case of ultra-distance. Not to mention the stage races. I faint.
The most curious thing for me is discovering the origins of this hobby. Because Ada hasn't always been dedicated to it. She was an executive secretary at a company and one day she said enough. She shifted to the cycling field, which she recognised as her passion from the age of 30, and held positions in bike shops, as a bike guide, and in online sports shops. Once the Covid-19 pandemic was over - or at least under control - she returned to being a bike guide (both on road and gravel) especially for tourists eager to soak up the beautiful landscapes in southern Europe.
But why cycling? And more so, why at 27 or 28 years old? “I wanted to change the unhealthy life I was leading,” she says. “Working, partying on weekends, smoking…”. She set the goal of reforming her habits and started running, but found it exhausting. I empathise, Ada. Later, she tried cycling and she liked it. That experience turned into a healthy practice that also had a significant social component and took her to places she had never been before. To top it all, one day (and as if by chance) she was amazed after cycling 80 kilometres. Then she saw things clearly and started entering races.
She adds, holding back laughter, that she went from going to bed at 5am to getting up at 6am to go cycling. What a plot twist, Ada, I admit it. “I was very clumsy as a child,” she confesses to me. It seems she had tried many sports as extracurricular activities, but none of them quite convinced her. However, during the holidays her cousins and she used to get around on bikes. When she tried it again as an adult, it suited her perfectly. Also, partly, because it took her for a while into the midst of nature, which is always a good thing.
Before asking her about Salssa (no, she still hasn’t tried any pouch), I try to delve into the link she maintains between food and sport. I’m left speechless when, without any kind of fuss, she remarks that “I’m very much about eating what I feel like and trying to do it balanced.” She doesn’t overthink it, which, in reality, I don’t think is bad at all. Each to their own!
To finish, I resort to a typical question that suddenly seems mysterious: could you be okay without doing sport? “No. I need to move,” she declares with a mix of enthusiasm, energy, and liveliness.
No wonder they call her “Ada non stop.”
