In his mid-to-late twenties, when most athletes are sharpening their edge, Neal Fryett was doing none of that. He was walking the streets of New York City, working as a technology analyst for a private equity firm, barely exercising. Two decades later, Fryett is one of the most successful indoor cyclists in the world—at 46 years old.
In high school and college, Fryett had been a competitive runner with an affinity for the 800 meters (PR of 1:51). He ran post-collegiately for Club Northwest and The New York Athletic Club for several years, but he said, “That wasn’t a realistic career path.” So instead of pursuing athletics, Fryett ceased running to focus on his career in information technology and economics.
But after some time, the NYC career path wasn’t quite working out in the way he had envisioned, either, so he moved west to attend grad school and pursue a career in photography.
By then, COVID had hit, and he wasn’t living a particularly healthy lifestyle. One day, his partner made a comment about his “growing dad bod,” and that was all he needed to get back in touch with his athletic roots.
He bought a bike and began riding around Seattle. There wasn’t much of a method, and the COVID pandemic had shut down the world. “I wasn’t even sure if we were allowed to ride outside,” Fryett recalled of those first outings.
Fryett joined the Velocio squad and soon entered his first top-level Zwift race. No, this isn’t a story about an uber-talented teenager who starts winning by accident. Fryett entered his first premier race and got absolutely crushed. Competing against the best indoor cyclists in the world, at 41, was daunting, but Fryett wasn’t deterred.
“I began training year-round, hired a coach and started putting in big-volume stints in the summer,” he said. He backed that up with focused training blocks in the winter. But he also had his firstborn on the way, and the growing family was looking to move house in one of America’s most competitive real estate markets. Still, none of those factors stopped him from progressing.
The answer is multifold: natural talent, years of endurance training, and work-life balance. Let’s go back to the beginning.
Fryett played basketball throughout high school and then switched to track in college. He ran the 800m, an event that elite runners complete in just under two minutes. If you’ve ever watched Fryett race on the indoor trainer, you can see the connection. While he’s certainly a strong all-rounder, Fryett is almost unbeatable when the race finishes with a 60-second effort.
Another one of Fryett’s biggest strengths is his ability to hide in the pack. You won’t even see him in the group, but then, with 300m to go, he will pop out of the draft to take the win. Fryett is smart, and he studies each course down to the meter. He knows where to be and when, and how he can use his abilities to win. Other riders tend to rely on their pure strength, their raw power output, in the hopes that they can just ride everyone off their wheel. But when that doesn’t work, Fryett will be there to take the win.
In addition to race-winning tactics, Fryett is also one of the hardest workers around. His indoor training sessions are downright brutal. Peruse his Strava account for a few minutes and you will find devilishly structured two-hour workouts. Every interval is intentional, all the way down to the specific cadence. Some of his sessions involve multiple one-minute intervals at 700 watts. Multiple. And that’s just the first half of the workout.
Out of the saddle, churning 500 watts, Fryett and Osborne are unstoppable when they’re feeling good.
Therein lies one of Fryett’s few weaknesses: finding his best legs. For the past two years, Fryett has travelled to Abu Dhabi to compete in the UCI eSport World Championships. Each year, he endured a 25-hour travel day from Seattle to the UAE, attempting to sleep across multiple flights and contend with the 12-hour time difference. “Even a few days after I landed, my body didn’t know what day it was,” he said.
When asked about any secrets about his training or any tips that might help an eSport cyclist make it to the top level, he doesn’t have one. In fact, Fryett’s life is not built around his training or rest, for that matter.
Maybe that is the secret we’re all looking for. Instead of doing more, we can focus on doing less. Instead of adding in heat training, altitude, supplements and lactate testing, what if we just increased our quality of life? What if we balanced our time and energy between family and cycling instead of choosing one over the other? That certainly seems to work for one of the best eSport cyclists in the world.
