Take the Leap: Kate Veronneau on Adventure and Trying Something New at FeistyFest
Hit Play Not Pause
Hit Play Not Pause
4.9 • 769 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this bonus episode, Selene welcomes longtime friend, cyclist, and women’s sports powerhouse Kate Veronneau to the show for a preview of the first-ever FeistyFest in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.
For Kate, the location is personal. The Valley Preferred Cycling Center is where she first fell in love with bike racing, found her cycling community, and eventually launched a career in the sport. She shares how a casual Friday night trip to watch track racing turned into an entry-level “try the track” class, a relocation to the Lehigh Valley, and years immersed in one of the most magical cycling communities around.
Selene and Kate talk about what makes the Lehigh Valley so special: quiet roads, covered bridges, gravel before gravel was “gravel,” beautiful trails, and a deep community of people who love to ride, run, explore, and support one another.
They also dig into what attendees can expect at FeistyFest: track riding, gravel, trail running, lifting, swimming, pickleball, community, laughter, and the kind of grown-up summer camp energy that reminds women how good it feels to try new things.
Kate also shares why women-only spaces can be so powerful, especially when women feel safe, supported, and encouraged to step outside their comfort zones. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete or brand new to an activity, there is something magical that happens when women come together, lift each other up, and give each other permission to live a little bigger.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to Hit Play Not Pause, a feisty menopause podcast for active performance-minded women. |
| 0:12.3 | I am your host, Celine Yeager. Each week, I bring you advice from athletes, scientists, researchers, and other experts to help you feel and perform your best no matter what your hormones are doing. |
| 0:23.1 | This show is a production of Feisty Media. |
| 0:27.1 | Hello, Strong Feisty Women. I hope you all are well. |
| 0:30.9 | So I have a real treat for you this week, this little bonus episode. |
| 0:35.9 | We have a special episode with one of the most influential |
| 0:39.1 | people in women's endurance sports, Kate Verano. And she will also be speaking at our first |
| 0:46.7 | annual Feisty Fest held in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, my home, this September 18th through |
| 0:53.3 | the 20th. We created Feisty Fest because over the years here at |
| 0:58.0 | Feisty where we have been holding events like our strength and our menopause retreats and gravel |
| 1:03.0 | festivals and camps, we have seen firsthand what happens when women come together to learn and grow |
| 1:09.5 | and try new things in a community of like-minded |
| 1:12.0 | women. Everyone comes back truly transformed. So we wanted to do that at scale with a big event |
| 1:19.3 | where women could try and learn lots of things like lifting and swimming and trail running |
| 1:24.0 | and gravel cycling and yes, even track cycling because we're hosting it at the Valley Preferred Cycling Center, which is an amazing Velodrome with a rich history of creating incredible women champions. |
| 1:36.9 | And there's no better person to talk about all of this than Kate. |
| 1:40.8 | She was a D1 basketball player before racing as a semi-pro cyclist in the U.S., a move that |
| 1:46.7 | the Velodrome played a major role in. She was the marketing director for an international |
| 1:51.5 | bike touring company before landing at Zwift, where she changed the sport of cycling as we know it, |
| 1:58.5 | spearheading the campaign behind L' Touror de France Femmes Avese |
| 2:02.6 | Zwift. |
| 2:03.6 | Kate is a powerhouse, and she's also a friend. |
... |
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