Johnson is a professional cyclocross rider who has competed on the international stage. Beginning Friday, Johnson began pedaling 500 miles from Boston to D.C. with 25 other cyclists for Tuesday’s National Bike Summit, hoping to raise $100,000 for the Bikes Belong Foundation, a charity that encourages kids to bike safely.
How did you get into cyclocross? When I was a kid I started doing some local mountain bike races, but I had no idea there was such a thing as a professional bike rider. I was just doing it for fun. When I turned pro in 2001 it was just as Lance [Armstrong] had won two out of seven [Tour de France races] so I was able to see the rise of the sport.
How has biking changed in that time? Globally, there’s been such a huge push for riding in general. Living near Boston and seeing what they’ve done with bike lanes and bike paths and now they have bike shares like you guys [in D.C.]. It’s not just the sport that has grown it’s the activity as a whole.
Other than the charity, what is the purpose of the ride? What we’re trying to do is bring together anybody that rides a bike for different reasons. I come from the world of racing, where people ride for fitness and training. And there are people who might just ride to work or once or twice a month with their kids. We want to bring together all those different kinds of groups.
As a pro riding with everyday people, what do you get out of it? Going for a 100-mile training ride or a 100-mile race, a multi day stage race like the Tour de France, is foreign to everyone but us. I get to give people a little bit of a taste of what our situation is for racers, but in a fun way. – Steve Contorno
