Introducing: Laura Claus

Welcome to CCC Introduces, our series spotlighting the incredible contributors who give their time and energy to Cycling Culture Club.

Today we head to Munich, meeting Laura Claus. Marketer, cyclist, community builder, and one of the people behind GRL PCK, a women-led cycling collective that started as a group of friends wanting to ride bikes together and has grown into something much bigger. You may have already read her piece about the GRL PCK Rally. This is where her story begins.

Socials: @grl.pck

Words: Laura Claus

Tell us about yourself

I'm a marketer, cyclist and community builder based in Munich, Germany. I've spent the last few years working in the cycling industry, particularly around women's cycling, brand and community projects, and I'm now exploring how I can bring those things together in my own work.

I'm also part of GRL PCK, a women-led cycling collective that started with a group of friends wanting to ride bikes together and has grown into a community built around adventure, connection and making cycling feel more accessible to more women.

Over the years we've organised rides, trips and events around Europe and beyond. Most recently, we brought 50 women together for the GRL PCK Rally, a seven-day, 800km self-supported ride across the Alps from Munich to Lausanne, finishing at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

A lot of what I'm interested in sits somewhere between grassroots cycling, the bike industry and professional sport: how communities grow, why representation matters, and what makes someone go from thinking 'that's not for me' to actually showing up and giving it a try.

What do you love about cycling?

For me, cycling has never really been about numbers or performance. I love that a bike can take you somewhere you probably wouldn't otherwise go, geographically but also personally.

Some of my favourite rides have involved being tired, slightly lost, carrying far too much stuff and wondering why we thought something was a good idea in the first place. Then somehow those are exactly the days you remember.

But more than anything, I love the people cycling has brought into my life. There's something very special about spending a whole day riding next to someone. You talk differently than you would sitting opposite each other at a table. And when you share climbs, bad weather, mechanicals, snacks and ridiculous situations, strangers can become friends surprisingly quickly.

That feeling is probably also what keeps me interested in creating cycling communities and events. The ride matters, but everything that happens around it often matters even more.

What barriers have you faced in cycling?

I've been involved in cycling for long enough that I sometimes forget how intimidating it can look from the outside.

There's a lot of assumed knowledge in cycling: what bike you need, what to wear, how fast you should be, how to ride in a group, how to fix things. None of it is necessarily intended to exclude people, but together it can create the feeling that everyone else already knows the rules.

Women also still receive a lot of messages, subtly or directly, about what kind of rider they are expected to be. Are you strong enough? Experienced enough? Technical enough? Serious enough?

One of the things I've learned through GRL PCK is how quickly those barriers can disappear when you create an environment where people don't feel they have to prove that they belong before they even start.

Why were you interested in contributing to Cycling Culture Club?

Because I think cycling needs more stories about everything that happens between the two extremes we often see: professional racing on one side and highly polished lifestyle imagery on the other. There is this huge, messy, brilliant world of people riding bikes for completely different reasons in between.

I'm particularly interested in women's cycling, community and the connection between grassroots participation and professional sport. We often talk about growing women's sport as if the audience and the participants are two completely separate groups, but I don't think they are.

Someone can ride their first bikepacking trip, join a community ride, start following a rider they relate to and suddenly find themselves standing on the roadside screaming at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Those things feed each other.

Tell us about your personal experience of diversity in cycling

For me, representation is less about ticking boxes and more about what people see as possible for themselves.

If all the imagery, stories and people associated with a sport look the same, it quietly tells everyone else who that sport is for.

With GRL PCK, we've seen again and again that simply creating a space where women can show up without feeling judged on speed, experience or equipment changes who participates and what they believe they can do afterwards.

That doesn't mean lowering the challenge. Quite the opposite. Some of our most memorable experiences have been difficult ones. But there's a big difference between something feeling challenging and something feeling like you don't belong there.

I think cycling is at its best when more people get to experience the first without the second.

Your fondest memory on the bike

This is almost impossible to answer because most of my favourite cycling memories aren't really one specific moment.

But arriving in Lausanne at the end of the GRL PCK Rally this summer is definitely up there. We had ridden for seven days across the Alps with 50 women. People had struggled, changed plans, taken trains, fixed mechanicals, formed groups, split up again and helped each other through some very long days.

When everyone eventually arrived, I realised that many of the riders who had barely known each other a week earlier had become genuinely close. And then we spent the weekend together watching the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. Some of them had never watched a professional bike race before.

Seeing riders become fans, strangers become friends and something we had imagined actually exist in real life was pretty special.

Where are you from: Germany

Where do you live: Munich, Germany

Are you part of a club/team: GRL PCK, a women-led cycling collective that started in 2017/18 as a group of friends riding together and has grown into a community creating rides, adventures and events for women in cycling.