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Major Taylor Cycling Club Carries On The Spirit
Of An Oft-Forgotten Hero

By Dwain Hebda of Bike Arkansas Magazine

Sheila Freeman is one of those rare individuals for whom no athletic activity presents too steep a challenge. A self-described gym rat and all-around fitness enthusiast, the Pine Bluff native wears well the nickname she picked up some time ago, “Wonder Woman.”

But while Freeman has never found a sport or trail that could defeat her, the cycling community she found in Little Rock when she was just getting into the sport was enough to make her give up on it altogether—temporarily.

“I originally started (cycling) in the summer of 1984 when I was working in Chicago,” she said. “An uncle of mine introduced me to road cycling and I did some riding with him that summer. But when I came back to Arkansas, I didn’t see anybody who looked like me cycling around here. I pretty much put my bike up and didn’t really do anything with it until 2011.”

That was the year that Freeman, Ron Sheffield and a handful of other individuals met to form a new cycling club dedicated to providing camaraderie and a shared love of riding, a group that has grown in more ways than one.

“All that we were talking about at that time was just a club to ride our bikes together and have fellowship and everything,” Freeman remembers. “We were trying to come up with a name for it and people were throwing out different things and Ron proposed that we name it after Major Taylor. That was the first time I had ever heard of [him].”

Forming the Major Taylor Cycling Club of Little Rock as a locally organized chapter of the Major Taylor National Association, Inc. – to say nothing of tagging the club after one of the sport’s earliest and oft-forgotten superstars – was more identity than mere name. Carrying on the legacy of Major Taylor inspired early club leadership with a clear beacon and example for what the group would stand for.

“The fact that [Major Taylor] had been a pioneer in a sport that had no pioneers, he had nobody to gauge himself off of,” Sheffield said. “He was a very spiritual man, he was very health conscious, he was a family man. And I said, ‘Why would we not want our cycling group named after him?’”

The all-inclusive membership of the group, also known as Rock City Riders, lives this purpose, on the bike and off. The club promotes cycling as a means of fitness and works to provide bikes to underserved youth by volunteering with North Little Rock’s Recycle Bikes for Kids.

“We’ve got members who are 72 years old to some who are in their late 20s,” Sheffield said. “We’re constantly looking for teenagers and younger people that we can teach how to cycle and how good cycling is, health-wise.”

Freeman and other club members also sit on various boards and commissions dedicated to helping improve and expand trails and cycling facilities in Central Arkansas. As a result of this work, Freeman said local cycling amenities have come a long way and, with them, local cycling’s reputation.

“The pedestrian bridges are, of course, the major accomplishment because that’s what allowed the event rides and the popularity of the event rides,” she said. “Once the Big Dam Bridge was built, there was nothing else like it. And with that ride, it brings people from all over the country and even overseas, and they love it.”

“The trails have been developed so much better and continue to be. And with clubs like ours and some of the others, when you go out and people see you with your gear on, riding in formation, people are inspired. They tell us we may have ridden by them one day, and it made them want to get a bike.”