'It's been a long journey' - Floyd Landis finds gravel as a reason to get back on a bike for the first time in a decade

While some of the best gravel and mountain bike racers on the planet kicked up the dust across the San Diego's North County hills in Southern California on Sunday, Floyd Landis stood anonymously in line at a start-finish area food tent to receive a waffle smothered with hazelnut chocolate spread. A puncture and suspected slow leak ended his day early after a couple of dozen miles on his bike at the Belgian Waffle Ride California.

The former WorldTour rider had no problem with the short day of bike riding, happy to have been at the front of the elite men's field for a while and enjoy familiar roads located 60 miles south of Temecula, where he used to live, 'a lifetime ago'.

"It's been a long journey for me in cycling. It feels good to do it again and be in shape and not the kind of shape that I was in before. I just like to ride my bike now. Yeah, it's fun. It took a while," he told Cyclingnews as he quickly consumed his waffle and soaked in the warm sunshine amid tables scattered with the riders who completed the short 'wafer' ride.

"There was a time when I just had a bad association with it [riding a bike], and just didn't really want to ride it. But enough time has passed, and now it's fun. It's kind of been a process for me.

"I'm gonna turn 50 in October, and I mean, you're young [once], you don't really think about it, especially if you're into cycling. You just don't really think about getting out of shape. It's hard to get in shape when you get out of it, it's really hard. And I struggled for a while.

"So time kind of caught up with me, and I started to wake up and my back hurt. This is no good, I've got to do something about this. So I'll try to ride my bike again. It took a while."

Landis grew up in a devout Mennonite family in rural Pennsylvania but instead of carving a path on the family farm, he turned to racing bikes, first as a mountain bike pro and then for a decade as a road pro. 

It's been almost 20 years since Landis rocketed to fame at the Tour de France as an overall winner in 2006. His fortunes plummeted a few days later, though, when a positive anti-doping test was revealed, leading to disqualification from the Grand Tour victory and a suspension for two years. 

He remained in the spotlight for several more years as he ultimately admitted his wrongdoing and then was the key whistleblower who exposed Lance Armstrong for an extensive program of systematic doping. 

He runs Floyd's of Leadville out of Colorado, with a marijuana dispensary in the mountain town of Leadville and "sell stuff online" for the cannabidiol (CBD), as he puts it. He's had the company for nearly nine years, for as long as he gave up riding his bike. 

"I didn't like being 'famous'. I didn't really ride my bike at all, and kind of got lazy. But the last few years, I got inspired and got back into it, and it's fun to get out," he recalled. 

He is friends with Michael Marckx, the founder and owner of the BWR off-road franchise, so he took part in a couple of the rides, not races, in the past two years, as well as SBT GRVL in Colorado in 2023.

"The Belgian Waffle Rides are good because they're really well done. There's a lot of support, and you don't ever feel like you're gonna get stranded out there and be stuck. They've got enough [aid] stations where you can stop and eat food if you want, and just make a day of it."

He tried to make a day of it at BWR Arizona in early March, but before he made it to the first dirt section, a rider crashed in front of him and he ended up on the pavement with a broken collarbone. So the BWR California was an excuse to ride again.

"I was a little nervous because I just don't want to fall again," he said with a laugh as he recalled his short ride that day. "They started going fast, I went to the front. Then they basically weren't really working together, and they let me ride away, so I got to the dirt part first. 

"Then I had some time to recover a little bit. I mean, I'm not in shape to try to win or anything, but I just didn't want to crash. I was inspired for a couple hours, I went hard. Then, thankfully, my tire went flat. It's always good to have a good excuse in cycling."

Landis did step back into the cycling world in 2022 when he launched one of the first off-road teams that had a co-ed roster of gravel and mountain bike riders, including MTB legend Tinker Juarez. He used the money he won from a US federal court settlement to prove Armstrong's fraud. Floyd's of Leadville Racing lasted one year.

He said it was "weird" how he had come to terms with riding a bike. Living in Leadville he watches the masses come each summer for the Leadville 100 MTB race and the 100-mile marathon running race. He said he has no desire to do either event.

"I just don't need that right now in my life, but it's fun to be up there and it's a good atmosphere," he said. "I like the couple of other gravel rides I've done. They are fun. I like the fact that you can just kind of, make it up as you go, that you don't have to worry about planning ahead.

"Coming back to San Diego, it's nice. I lived here for a while back in the '90s. Man, that sounds really old, the other century," he shook his head as if to get rid of the cobwebs.

"Those were some good years of my life I spent here. So it's nice for me to come back and just get some sunshine and it's good memories."