Meet the Bread Pedalers
Professional Racers and Bakers from West Allis
For most people, racing professionally would be more than a full-time job, leaving little time for hobbies or other professional work. With over 100 professional race wins to their names, Sam and Skylar Schneider are serious racers. As bakers and owners of The Bread Pedalers bakery in West Allis they are also seriously talented business owners.
We are grateful that Skylar (who has 2028 Olympic hopes) shared their story with us:
Tell us about your background.
We are from West Allis, WI and still call West Allis home. I’m currently 25 years old, my sister Sam is eight years older, and my brother Sean is right in the middle. We all got our start in racing quite young with BMX.
How did you get involved in cycling?
When our parents met in high school, our dad was already involved in the sport, both as a racer and a master frame builder with Schwinn. At first, our mom had no desire to ride a bike. This changed when our dad built her a custom hot pink frame. Within a few years, our parents were traveling the country racing with friends and even my uncles. Our mom continued racing track after Sam was born. Our dad started his own team called Coyote and transitioned to more of a coaching and team management role. Sam grew up watching our mom race, and I grew up watching Sam race (this is usually where I remind Sam how much older she is than me, hehe). In 2013, when I was 14, my dream came true. I raced in my first professional criterium as Sam’s teammate. Over the past decade, we have spent seven years as teammates and have won over 100 professional races.
How did you get involved in baking?
I absolutely love to cook, but I stayed away from baking until covid. In 2020, I was living in Spain and racing with the number 1 ranked team in the world. In Spain, daily visits to the local bakery for fresh bread became one of my favorite routines. After returning home in March 2020 and quarantining, it became my mission to learn how to make bread like the loaves I had enjoyed in Europe. I started a “bread club” and baked different flavored loaves then delivered them to family and friends while everyone was isolated. I went from trying to conquer just one loaf to over twenty at a time. My bread club lived on for about a year and a half before the idea of opening a real bakery was born.
I had no plans to start a business at all. Sam found the property where The Bread Pedalers is currently located and saw it as an investment property for her husband. Then, Sam thought to turn the property into a bakery and approached me with the idea. She was met with a hard “no.” I was focused on racing and any culinary dream could wait until I retired. But the uncertainty of that time and a recent cancer diagnosis for our mom came as a harsh reminder of how short life can be. I came around to the idea and when our mom beat cancer, she became our first full-time employee.
Where do you most like to train?
In addition to their passion for cycling, our parents also passed down a lot of their training routes. Over time some roads have changed and the routes have been altered, but for the most part we train on the same roads our parents did. To be honest, we have about five routes that we have done hundreds of times because we know exactly how long they are and good places for intervals. When we need a longer route, we just combine these five key routes. All of our routes leave from West Allis and most of them head west towards Waukesha and Muskego. We also have a route to and around Pewaukee that we love. On our easier days we jump on a path like the Oak Leaf or Hank Aaron. One day I’ll get more adventurous and create more routes!
What strategies help balance and manage your time?
There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything we want to do, so we prioritize what we need to do. I usually plan about a week in advance to make sure I have enough time for training and everything that needs to be done at the bakery. When I say plan, I usually have it down to the hour. I do incorporate an hour after training every day to shower, eat, and power nap which is a necessary intermission during my day. Fortunately, the staff at the bakery is fantastic, but there are still an infinite number of smaller tasks to tend to as the owners.
When the season starts and we are traveling in and out, it gets even more complicated! You really just have to give your best each day and go to bed being content with that. Sam does all of this with a two year old son, and I’m in awe of how she handles everything so gracefully.
Being a professional athlete is one of the most physically exhausting jobs while being a business owner is one of the most mentally exhausting jobs; doing both is hard! But at the same time, it forces us to have a healthy balance. We are not consumed with one career; we don’t think about cycling all day, every day or the bakery 24/7 because we have to focus on other things. One day I think I’ll be ready to retire from cycling and pursue additional locations and culinary goals, but right now cycling brings me so much happiness.
What are your long term goals for both of these awesome interests/ areas?
I’m an ambitious and fearless goal setter. I like to set goals with the mindset “what’s the best that could happen?” Then I create a path for getting there, with smaller more achievable goals along the way.
My long-term goal for cycling is to race the 2028 Olympics and win a World Championship. The smaller (but still challenging!) goals along the way include winning a national championship and returning to the World Tour. Going back to the World Tour would require a move back to Europe, probably not the easiest choice when you own a business in the US. But, I’m determined to make it work and as I mentioned earlier, have an amazing team of people at The Bread Pedalers, and Sam of course, to help.
Our long-term goals for The Bread Pedalers include expanding the hours and increasing staffing at our current location to better keep up with our community. One day (after 2028) we hope to open more locations. In the meantime, it’s also important to us to better connect our cycling community and to use the bakery as a potential hub to do that. More group rides, coffee meet-ups, workshops, etc.
What advice would you give someone trying to run a small business and remain an athlete?
Someone once told me “you can do anything you want,” and I took it literally. You can do both, if you really, really want to. My advice is to plan your days in advance to schedule your training around what you need to get done at your business. Set yourself up for success.
Any training tips to share?
My training tip: remember to take care of yourself off the bike. It’s easy to drink and eat while you’re riding, but it’s important to fuel before and after workouts as well. Also, you have to rest!
Are there any aspects of your local community that make it easier or more difficult?
I do believe that Wisconsin has a wonderful cycling community that encompasses all levels and ages. I think one of the difficulties we face is that cycling isn’t as popular (or welcome) in the US as it is in many other countries. Drivers don’t know (or care) how to pass cyclists safely on the road. It’s super important to me to use our platform at The Bread Pedalers to not only spread the word about the sport and get more people on bikes, but to educate drivers on how to safely pass and be aware of cyclists on the road. Perhaps this will be the perfect collaboration with The Wisconsin Bike Fed.
This article was originally published in the 2024 Bike Fed Ride Guide. All Bike Fed members receive a print copy, delivered right to their address of choice, each spring. Join/renew today to support cycling in Wisconsin and receive our next copy in 2025!
Bonus article about the 2024 Boise Twilight Criterium, highlighting Skylar’s continued success!
Feature photo at top: Skylar Schneider. Photo by Peter DiAntoni.