Selene Yeager Interview: How To Thrive On The Bike Thru Menopause

I’m thrilled to bring you my conversation with Selene Yeager, a powerhouse in the cycling world who has evolved her career to focus on helping active women navigate menopause. As host of the “Hit Play Not Pause” podcast and content creator for Feisty Menopause, Selene brings decades of experience as a contributing editor to Bicycling Magazine, author of over two dozen books, and a background in racing and coaching.

In this interview, we discuss what women should know about peri- and post- menopause, from recognizing early symptoms to adjusting training, recovery, and nutrition. Selene shares valuable insights on strength training, saddle comfort issues, and why you should be tracking your symptoms.

Whether you’re approaching peri-menopause, in the midst of it, or supporting someone who is, you’ll find practical advice for maintaining performance and joy on the bike through midlife and beyond.

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👉 Podcast: Hit Play, Not Pause
👉 Instagram: @FitChick3
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Embracing a New Mission

Selene’s journey into becoming a menopause advocate wasn’t planned, but rather evolved naturally as she experienced changes in her own body.

“Because I hit menopause,” Selene explained candidly when I asked why this has become her focus. “I co-authored a book with Dr. Stacey Sims, who is pretty much a pioneer and thought leader in the women’s specific training and nutrition space. We wrote a book called ROAR in 2016. And we had one chapter on menopause… We had heard out of the gate that one chapter was not enough on menopause. Then once we hit menopause transition ourselves, I was like those women were correct. We need another book.”

What’s particularly striking about Selene’s work is that she recognized a significant gap in information for active women going through menopause. While general advice about exercise and nutrition existed, there was nothing specifically addressing the needs of performance-minded women.

“At the time, when I was looking for information, there wasn’t anything for active women. You could go on the internet and you would find, ‘you should exercise or you should eat well.” And I kept thinking, okay, yeah, I’m on that. I’m racing my bike and I’m fueling myself,” she reflected.

Recognizing the Signs of Perimenopause

For women who are approaching or just entering perimenopause, Selene offers insights on early signs to watch for:

“A lot of times those first signs are a bit subtle with your cycle. Your cycle might get a little longer, might get a little shorter, get spaced out a bit. But more than that, women will see mood disturbances arising more. I wish I had known that anxiety was an early symptom of perimenopause.”

She emphasized symptoms that many women wouldn’t immediately connect to hormonal changes: “Waking up in the middle of the night feeling of impending doom, I hear that over and over and over. People start waking up in the middle of the night and they have anxiety or they’re starting to have some hot flashes in the night that they’re not recognizing as such, because it’s just like heart palpitations that they’re experiencing.”

One particularly important insight for active women: “Women who are mountain biking, all of a sudden they freeze with fear on a feature that they’ve ridden dozens of times.”

Training Adaptations for Midlife Athletes

When it comes to adjusting training for perimenopause and menopause, Selene offers practical advice:

“I would say the big one that helps most women that I see is if they haven’t started a resistance training practice, start a resistance training practice,” she emphasized. “Your estrogen and your reproductive hormones are also very intricately involved with your musculoskeletal system. That’s why women’s bone health deteriorates around menopause. They lose bone, they lose muscle, they lose muscle strength.”

She frames it in a way that’s easy to understand: “You want to think of it as you’re stepping in where your hormones are going to be leaving off a little bit.”

For cyclists specifically, Selene highlights an often overlooked issue: “For cyclists, you want to pay attention to what’s going on in the vulval vaginal area because estrogen helps keep those tissues elastic, moist, healthy, thick, all of the things.”

This can significantly impact comfort on the bike: “Those tissues go through a drying, they become more fragile, and some women have a lot of trouble sitting on their bike saddle for the first time, maybe. And it can be extremely uncomfortable.”

Her solution is straightforward: “Talk to your doctor. Get a prescription for vaginal estrogen. It is a really great thing.”

Finding the Right Training Balance

On the ongoing debate about high intensity versus low intensity training during menopause, Selene takes a measured approach:

“My first take on that is if what you’re doing is working, continue to do it,” she advised. “What happens sometimes is that people will say, I’m doing the same training that I always was doing. And that usually means a lot of volume, not always, but often it means a lot of volume. And I’m flat. I’m not getting faster. I’m going backwards.”

For those experiencing these challenges, she suggests: “Sometimes it benefits women in this phase to polarize their training a little more… You need a little bit more recovery, you don’t want to lose that top end, but you don’t absorb all that volume quite as well.”

The Importance of Protein and Recovery

When it comes to recovery, Selene highlights nutrition as a key factor:

“I do think that you should pay more attention to your nutrition,” she noted. “One of the things I hear over and over and over again is that when women are struggling with the recovery, that when they start paying attention to actually hitting some of those higher protein marks, being 30 grams breakfast, 30 grams lunch, 30 grams dinner, spread throughout the day, they do find that they recover better.”

Evolving with Your Cycling Journey

Perhaps one of the most inspiring aspects of my conversation with Selene was hearing how her own relationship with cycling has evolved over time:

“I didn’t really start semi-professionally racing until I was 40. So I raced mountain bike stage racing all through my early to mid-40s, probably until about 47, 48. Got into gravel racing, did a lot of that. And it was a lot of pursuit of podiums. It was very serious. I did a lot of training.”

But then something shifted: “At some point I got, I just wanted to do something else. I felt like I wanted to still do big long rides. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to do all of those things. But I just didn’t care about podium pursuits any longer. It wasn’t captivating to me. It felt like a chore.”

This led her to discover bikepacking: “We did the Hut to Huts from Durango to Moab. And I thought, this is amazing. Because all of those years that I was racing in places like South Africa at the Cape Epic or Brazil, it was astronomical and it was amazing. But I always felt a little bittersweet because you couldn’t stop and like, look at something.”

The Joy of Riding

When asked about her favorite thing about riding a bike, Selene’s answer was simple but profound:

“It’s so cliche, but I feel, I feel free. There’s no other place that I feel I am meant to be. I really feel like I am meant to ride a bike because my earliest memories are riding a tricycle and dreams of riding a bike… And as soon as I sit on my bike and I start coasting down my street, calmness comes over me and I just feel centered and just it feels very free.”

Looking Forward

As women continue to push boundaries in cycling at all ages, Selene’s work becomes increasingly important. She’s considering future book projects that would address different life stages for athletic women, including puberty and longevity.

“I think that that is where we’re going next is looking at what does it mean to age well as a woman? And I think menopause is a really very, very important part of that conversation because that’s when pivots start to happen and your body demands to have attention paid to it. Then, women live a long time. How can we help them live better?”

More Episodes You Might Enjoy

• Tips For Cycling After 40 With Sylvie D’Aoust
• How To Know What To Eat As A Female Cyclist With Dietician Uri Carlson
• Why Strength Training Is A Must With Bekah Rottenberg

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