Interview - Jeff Lenosky

When you’ve been an industry icon for over 22 years, you don’t have to be nice. You don’t have to be approachable. You certainly don’t have to have your child’s birthday party interrupted to loan your buddy a wheelset because he just thrashed his at a race where you were competing against him. But Jeff Lenosky is and has done all of that. His three-decade spanning career has taken him to some incredible and iconic mountain bike destinations, but the Giant (literally) Factory rider has called New Jersey home for his entire life. He was born in Passaic and raised in Fairfield; both New Jersey towns. Jeff now calls Sparta, NJ, home along with his wife of sixteen years, Amy, and their three kids Jack (12) Katie (10) and Max (3). Jeff has also become heavily involved with the new East Coast web series, From Where We Stand, both as a rider and a facilitator. Recently, Jeff and I talked about his career, his continued love of bikes and his involvement in the new series. Jeff was already an inspiration to many, myself included, and our discussion was a strong reminder as to why.


What are some of your earliest memories on a bicycle?

Probably some of my earliest memories on a bike are from growing up in Fairfield, New Jersey, which was 25+ years ago when BMX wasn’t what it is now. I had a bike and I just started building jumps and stuff in my backyard and just kind of did that. Then one day I was at the mall and went into a magazine shop. I saw a BMX Action magazine and I was kind of hooked right from there. That was probably when I was maybe 13 or 14 years old? For the next bunch of years, every time I’d get a new BMX magazine I’d try to learn all of the tricks I would see in the magazine before the next issue came out.


At what point did you realize mountain biking was going to be an integral part of your life?

I started riding BMX when I was 13 or 14 but by the time I was 16 or 17 I was something like 6’3” or 6’4”, which is about as tall as I am now. I kind of just outgrew BMX bikes; I was a little too tall. I remember thinking that Tony Hawk was pretty tall, he was around 6’2” or something, so maybe I should just skateboard since there’s not as much of a height restriction as with a BMX bike.

Around my junior year in high school I got pretty heavily into skateboarding and did that quite a bit. Just before college, I ended up with a summer job at a bike shop right around when mountain biking was becoming pretty popular. To me, it was kind of like BMX but with a bigger wheel and a bigger bike, so I just fit on it better.


I got my first mountain bike and would go out with the other shop guys on group rides. Those guys were more traditional mountain bikers and I would always come on the rides and was just a punk 17 year old kid. They’d be climbing the mountains and I’d go with them but I was always trying to jump over rocks or ride on some logs. We’d finish the ride and I’d try to ride off of picnic tables and stuff like that. It was the same kind of stuff we did on skateboards and BMX bikes. I’d acid drop off stuff; ollie over things. I’d go on these cross country rides with these guys but then I’d always be screwing around on the side.

It turns out one of the guys at the shop was the New Jersey state champion in trials and he suggested that maybe that was a little more my style. I didn’t really know that the sport totally existed; the only other exposure I had prior to that was seeing a video of Hans Rey in Macy’s. It was a video of him trials riding in California for Swatch. This guy, Scott Steward, was the New Jersey state champion and he basically introduced me to the sport.

When did things really take off for you?

I started off racing XC, but 1993 was when I started travelling quite a bit and was the year I won my first National Championship. I guess I had a little bit of luck that year. Normally the Trials National Championships were always held on different kinds natural terrain, and it takes a few years to really learn how to read the terrain so I wasn’t always doing very well. In 1993 I think it was held in Traverse City, Michigan and the course featured more man-made structures. I was good at bunny hopping and big gaps but not the technical stuff early on; so it definitely suited me and I was able to win it that year.

In 1994, 1995 and the following few years, I’d want to go mountain biking and dirt jumping and I’d want to street ride. It was before those things really existed (as they do today) in the mountain bike world. They were just things that I enjoyed doing and as a result I wasn’t practicing trials as much as my competitors were. I’d always end up 2nd or 3rd; never really living up to my potential because I just wanted to do all of this other stuff. By 1999, I figured if I really want to win, I had to focus on trials. So for the next couple of years I pretty much only rode trials. I’d mess around in the skate parks or on the dirt jumps a little bit, but for the most part it was all about trials. In 1999 and 2000 I won two National Championships back-to-back. In the process, I kind of burnt myself out on it a little bit because I had been so used to being able to ride everything and instead, for those two years I pretty much only focused on trials. 2000 was also the year I was riding for Schwinn when they went bankrupt and I was suddenly at this pivotal point in my career. I’d burnt myself out on trials and I had to find new sponsors. I got with Giant and around that time the freeriding thing was starting to get pretty popular. I filmed my first part for the New World Disorder series and had a great time doing it. I was starting to see that freestyle-trials and the urban freeride stuff could be an actual marketable thing that I could do. It wasn’t just about competing; people actually wanted to see these videos.


In 2001 I figured I’d not compete in trials as much because I was staying super busy doing trials demos, photo shoots and filming for mountain bike movies. That was how I got into the whole freeride scene for such a long time. From 2001 to 2009 I was really just into filming for freeriding, dirt jumping and street riding. It was super fun and I’d still be able to trail ride a little bit, but not a ton; not as much as I had been doing prior to that point.

Then, in February of 2009, I broke my leg screwing around and hitting some jumps in the snow with Aaron Chase. I snapped my leg and went from the top of the freeride world to feeling like I was at ground zero. It was probably the best thing that had happened to my career to be honest with you. I had been riding for so long and it was just getting super easy to get exposure. I don’t think I ever totally took riding for granted, but you don’t realize how easy that can be taken away from you until something like that happens. That was my first major injury ever; I was just so used to riding my bike every day and then one day I break my leg and there’s this huge reality hit. I started thinking, maybe I won’t ride again; maybe I won’t do a photo shoot again; maybe I won’t do a trials demo and hear people cheer again. As crazy as that sounds, riding for a bunch of people and feeling like you got them excited about bikes is an awesome feeling. It definitely made me realize how much I really love riding my bike and how much a part of my life it was. That happened and suddenly I'm staring at 16 weeks of rehabilitation. That was a long time to be off of the bike. When I was allowed to start training again, I wasn’t able to just get right back into dirt jumps or anything; I had to start with minimal weight bearing stuff. An early part of my rehab was spending time riding on the road. That was the only way I could get on a bicycle and not hurt anything and work on rebuilding my strength. The next step was to do some cross country mountain biking. They said “you could get out on the bike, work on your fitness a little bit” and stuff like that. I wasn’t allowed to go jumping off of stuff on my legs yet, so I started riding cross country and really remembered how much I love doing that. When I first started riding, it was ⅓ cross country, ⅓ trials and ⅓ downhill. I’d often travel to national or local events and do all three. Rehabilitating helped me remember those days and I started integrating those styles into my riding more. Even while I still wasn’t necessarily allowed to go and hit dirt jumps, I was allowed to start riding trials. I’d go out and start playing around on picnic benches or curbs, keeping it simple but having a ton of fun on my bike.


So the whole injury process really helped me fall back in love with the two things I started out with: riding trials and riding trails. Since then, that’s been the focus of my riding. I’ll go out and do some street riding or hit some jumps but for the most part it’s all about trail riding and trials.

Why start racing enduro?

Over time, trials (competition) in the U.S. has gotten really small. You can go to a National Championships and there are only 3 or 4 pro riders. Aside from competing at Crankworx every year, there just wasn’t much inspiration to go out and compete. Really, my only competitive outlet was the Speed Trials at the Teva Mountain Games. I’d compete there and it was something I always looked forward to and would always try to make the podium. I loved the process starting a few months out; with the training and trying to determine your best setup. But it was only once a year, so it was always frustrating that there weren’t more events like that.

When the enduro thing became more popular, I figured it would be a fun transition for me because I like competing. There aren’t really any trials or street trials competitions out there and I’m not a slopestyle rider so it’s not like I can just go and do that kind of stuff. In order to get that competitive fix, it seemed like enduro fit the bill because there’s a lot of bike set-up, tinkering with equipment, training and setting goals and that’s really what brought me into the enduro racing thing. It wasn’t really a natural extension; a lot of pros come from cross country or downhill as those are more natural transitions than it is for a trials rider. But for me, it’s just a chance to go out there and mix it up and try to do your best and compete.

Does your trials background provide you with any advantages racing enduro or even just riding trail?

I think it helps me with East Coast trail riding, where the riding is slower and more technical. As far as racing I don’t think trials technique help at all. If anything, there have been a lot of bad habits that I’ve had to break because of trials riding. With trials, you’re really focusing on where you tires are and looking straight down. When you’re going 30 mph down a trail, you need to have your head up and looking far down the trail.

The one thing that has carried over to help me really enjoy enduro racing and what I really enjoyed about trials when I was getting into it was the fact that it wasn’t necessarily a judged sport. It wasn’t like slopestyle where somebody was giving you a score. With trials, you either make it through the section or you don’t; it’s pretty cut and dry.

Has it been difficult to stay relevant as a professional athlete for so many years? To what do you credit for the longevity of your career?

I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like a blessing and a curse being such a bike nut. If I was a stubborn rider and I only rode trials, I probably wouldn’t still be riding professionally, you know? I did trials for a good 10 years and I got a little bit burnt out on it. Now I’m in love with it again because I took a step back for a number of years and focused on urban freeride, dirt jumping and stuff like that. There’s also enduro which is great because I’ve always loved trail riding. I don’t know; I’ve always wanted to be an all-around rider and have always had bike A.D.D. It doesn’t matter if it is a road bike, or a mountain bike or a dirt jumper; I just love riding bikes. I think just riding so many different styles has allowed for me to keep it fresh.


Your career has allowed you to travel extensively and explore some incredible places. What has kept you on the East Coast despite the fact that you could probably live and ride anywhere in the world?

Early on, I’d say with riding trials it was the most ideal place to live actually. When I first started competing in trials, all of the top guys lived on the East Coast. There was a really good training scene and local competitions were on the same level of riding as the national competitions. The same pool of riders meant you just wouldn’t roll up to a local competition and get an easy win because they were the same dudes who were winning the national (competitions). So I think it was a great place to live because we had everyone to feed off of and we had really technical terrain. For urban freeriding, there are more easily accessible large cities around here than anywhere else in the world. On the West Coast or wherever, they just don’t have that.

Now that I’ve been professionally mountain biking for 22 years and I can live wherever I want, it’s a combination of things. I really love living on the East Coast. If I only rode here, I don’t think that would be conducive to being a super well rounded rider because it’s definitely a distinct style of riding; it’s slower and more technical than it is in say, California or Colorado. But it’s easier, I think, to learn high speed riding than it is the slow speed, technical stuff that’s rocky and rooty and stuff like that. I get to travel enough to round it out. The other thing that you realize when you’ve ridden for over 22 years is that bicycle riding is really, really important to me. But it’s not the only thing that I enjoy doing and I think I just really love the culture that comes with living here. There’s awesome riding but you’re not in some remote location where’s there’s nothing else to do. It’s easy for me to step back from riding and go to New York City or do something else versus just riding.

Let’s say someone from another part of the world has the chance to spend one week riding on the East Coast and they’ve come to you for advice. Where and how should they spend that week?

Well I think that one of the best things about the East Coast depending on where you are, and I happen to be centrally located, is that within...let’s say you’re being super ambitious...a 5 hour drive, you can have such a crazy diverse riding experience that you can’t really get anywhere else in the country. Within 5 hours, you could ride someplace super rocky and rugged like Mountain Creek Bike Park or you could go up to Highland, which is a little more groomed. You could go to the Kingdom Trails, or Delaware and White Clay, places where it’s super flowy and smooth. You can just sample so many different styles of trail here. You can go to central Pennsylvania and the Appalachians, where there are some pretty big mountain ranges and you can get some big, epic riding in. In other places, you can kind of get locked into one particular style of riding when you’re there. But on the East Coast if you have a few days to kill, you can run the gamut of styles of riding. It’s pretty good, you know? You could really brush up on a lot of different types riding, work on your skills and experience different styles in a smaller area and it’s a lot more convenient to get around.


What does being involved with a project like From Where We Stand mean to you?

I think it’s about trying to increase the visibility of the East Coast mountain bike community. I don’t think a lot of people typically associate the East Coast with mountain biking. It’s kind of natural to think of Colorado or California when you think about mountain biking since those are some places with big mountains. But the fact of the matter is that the riding here is pretty awesome and I think that hardcore enthusiasts realize that but I think it would be cool to get the casual rider to be aware of that also.

If you look at World Cup racing, the only World Cup downhill race that’s been in America was on the East Coast at Windham (New York). I think that’s because we have the most challenging terrain. Even in Canada, the World Cup is in the east (Mont Saint Anne). We have really rugged terrain and I think that someone who is really into mountain biking; they know that. But the more casual rider may not. So being a part of this and being able to show the mountain bike community that we do have great riding and great riders and that our scene is just as good as anywhere else in the country. It’s just cool to be a part of.

What lessons have you learned in your career that you want to pass on to other riders?

The first thing would be to just try and be as well rounded as possible. In my opinion, the best riders of all time were always super well rounded. I could ramble off tons of names of different guys that I admire and they’re never a pure specialist, they can ride all different types of terrain. So the main thing is to try and have as broad a skillset as possible. It’s never going to hurt you out on the trail to dig into your bag of tricks or experiences and have ridden something similar somewhere down the line that you know how to handle. So that’s my main thing.

This kind of goes hand in hand with that, but you should always try to push yourself to be better. With myself, every single time I ride, I try to do something better than I did it before and learn something new. Maybe what contributes to my bicycle A.D.D. is the fact that I just love that steep learning curve. That’s why I love trying something new. Whenever you take on that new discipline, it’s easier to learn things more quickly when you’re in the habit of trying something new. It becomes harder (to learn) the longer you stick to just one style. Always try to challenge yourself. It doesn’t have to be about competing against other people, because you may win or you may lose, but that’s not as satisfying as knowing you just did better than you’ve ever previously done.

How have you made sure you’re always having fun riding your bike despite having to do it for a living?

It’s fun for me because I really, really love riding bikes, this sport and the people. I’m kind of in a unique situation where my sponsors count on me to get exposure and fortunately I have a pretty broad skill-set. There might be one week where training to race enduro starts to feel like work and then suddenly I have some trials demos to do. Then I’ll do my demos and I might get tired after 4 weekends in a row travelling for trials demos when suddenly I have a photo shoot for some street riding. I feel lucky to be in the situation I am where it’s my job to get exposure for my sponsors but fortunately I love riding so many different things and I can ride different things pretty well.

So when it starts to feel like work I can take a break and not force it. That’s probably the main thing, because once you start forcing yourself to do something and it starts to feel like work it stops being fun and it’s not something you want to do for 22 years. I follow my heart on my bike and some days it tells me to do some trail riding, other days it tells me to go ride trials and other days it tells me to go hit some jumps. It’s kind of a lucky place to be.



First 5 photos are courtesy of Matthew DeLorme. Final photo is courtesy of Callie Horwath.


Jeff’s sponsors include Giant, Mavic, Teva, Shimano, X-Fusion, Clif Bar, Ergon, Avex Water Bottles, Native Eyewear, MRP, G Form, Pro Gold and Mountain Creek Bike Park.