Posted on March 26, 2026 at 06:00 AM
Michael Woods is blazing a new path, a messy and disorganized one, but he’s never been happier. After years of weighing his own food while racing on the World Tour, the 39-year-old now works with personal sponsors, mentors young athletes, and continues to compete at the highest level of endurance sport.
Among these sports are gravel, marathon mountain biking, skimAnd triathlon. Woods hasn’t touched his time trial bike yet, but he has been learning how to swim, even at the high altitudes of Andorra.
For someone who spent more than two decades as an endurance athlete, you might think Woods would want to take a break after his cycling career. In fact, the opposite is true. It was woods He is already planning his sports career after cycling Before his last race as a professional cyclist.
Early exit from the WorldTour
Come 2025, Woods intends to retire from the Canadian WorldTour races – the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal and the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec – close to his hometown of Toronto. But the hernia worsened during the 2025 season, and by the time he was racing the Tour de France, the injury had become too much to handle.
Rather than end his cycling career on his own terms, Woods had surgery and began his recovery away from cycling. His last race was the 21st stage of the Tour de France, which ended on the Champs-Élysées, a fitting end to an impressive career that has included four Grand Tour stage wins, a second place in Liege-Bastogne-Liege, and third in the 2018 Road World Championships.
Michael Woods goes from running to cycling to multi-sport
Woods’ second retirement wasn’t too different from his first. At the age of twenty-five, he was forced to retire from running, the sport in which he had shown the most promise since he was young.
“My peak as a runner was 2005-2006, and then after 2006, I started having injury problems. “I tried to fight back, and I became a sad person who worked in a running shoe store and worked in a bank… just feeling lost and not knowing what I wanted to do,” Woods said. “Ultimately, that was the realization at the end of 2011 that this was not going to be a viable option.”
Woods had to leave the sport due to injury, and immediately entered the world of cycling.
While working part-time at A bike shop Starting a coaching business that “has now grown to over 30 coaches and 600 clients in locations across Canada,” Woods races against the best cyclists in North America. It wasn’t long before he turned professional, and a few years later, he was racing in the Tour de France.
With his cycling career over, there was never any doubt about what came next. In Woods’ mind, he always liked to push himself. He wanted to try something new – some new things, actually – throw himself in the deep end, and see what happens.
Since the fall of 2025, Woods has been preparing for his next adventures: gravel, skimo, MTB, and triathlon. There is not necessarily a main focus in his training. In fact, he doesn’t even have one Training plan. Woods is very busy these days, and lives a more balanced life.
Finding balance in triathlon
Life as a WorldTour cyclist is tough, even for an athlete as talented as Woods. Years of training, accidents and dieting led Woods to a dark place. He avoided kissing his children on the forehead for fear of getting sick. And he weighed everything he ate until the summer of 2025. The 175 cm tall Canadian raced in the Tour de France weighing 60 kg – at present, he is 4-5 kg heavier, and much more. a lot Happier.
“I like the public side of things right now,” Woods said. “But with major events on the road, whether it’s Ironman or even… there’s a slim chance that I can do a world road race in September, and if that’s the case, I’ll definitely hunker down for 3-4 months to be at my best.”
Woods says he keeps balance at the forefront when he makes decisions about his future: “You can’t stay on the edge forever. In fact, it has an impact on your long-term health, and I feel like the best athletes in the world, in most endurance disciplines, are not necessarily the best examples of the healthiest people. … I’m wrestling with that right now. I enjoy being healthier, I enjoy feeling stronger. But I don’t like feeling like I’m not. I go to the best of my ability to go to an event.”
Instead of a structured training plan, Woods plans his training on a whim. As you can see, he doesn’t have the time or flexibility to plan for that in the future. In addition to working with agents and sponsors, Woods is also a sports mentor for his former team, NSN Cycling Team. When one of his students wants to go on a tour of Andorra, Woods dons a kit and joins them.
Gone are the days of optimizing performance through every detail. On the WorldTour, Woods took care of everything: laundry, cooking, massages, recovery, sleeping, route planning, etc. There was an entire staff dedicated to removing stress from Woods’ life. Most days, he just had to show up and ride his bike.
“The WorldTour is amazing at how you can improve your performance, and I really realize that now,” Woods said. “Because of the money I was making, I could justify devoting the entire day to improving my performance, recovering as much as I could, and training as hard as I could.”
Things are much different these days. While Woods has the support of agents and two coaches, he is juggling far more duties than ever before. When he lines up for a triathlon or ski race, sometimes his only support crew is a family member or friend.
Dive into new specialties
When it comes to triathlon, Woods is ready to throw himself in at the deep end. He had He never swam until his adult lifeSo he has a dedicated swimming coach, who helps him improve his technique in a few sessions a week.
“I’m not a strong swimmer, but I like the progress he’s made, how technical he is,” Woods said. “I started working with a coach, and the first thing he said to me was, ‘The good news is, you have a lot to improve on.’”
In addition to learning to swim from scratch, Woods will return to his running roots by training for triathlons. He broke his toe on his son’s bed in the winter, so it’s been a while since Woods has put together a consistent block of running training. But when it comes to triathlon, cycling is the easy part.
Since moving to Andorra, Woods has been snowboarding for the past four years. But in his first Skimo race, Woods expects to learn quickly.
“I want to dive deep into myself, get my ass kicked, see all the things that matter to me, and tell all those stories,” Woods said.
He currently trains 18 to 20 hours a week, and aims to do two sports a day as his baseline. Of course, there’s really no training plan behind all of this. Sometimes, Woods looks at the weather forecast and decides what type of workout he wants to do.
A trial-by-fire approach to triathlon
Woods hasn’t decided yet when he’ll compete in his first triathlon — perhaps Ironman Lake Placid in July — but regardless of the date, he’s prepared to be unprepared.
“When I do my first triathlon… it will be a shock, and I think I will make a lot of mistakes, I will look like an idiot at one point, and then I will be much better the next time.”
Woods is not someone who needs to tick all the boxes before the first race. Instead, he prefers trial by fire. He will jump into the race and learn more in three hours than he does in three weeks of training.
And that’s exactly what happened in his first gravel race, a two-day event in Spain called Santa Val.
“With what I did on the first day, I was much better on the second day,” Woods said. “I’d never used a bladder before. I looked like a new person the first day because I didn’t cut the hose; it was swinging everywhere.”
Woods expects the same from his first triathlon. He will do his best to prepare in training, but knows he will likely make some rookie mistakes in his first race. And he’s totally fine with that.
The freedom to fail is somewhat new to Woods. When his entire life revolved around performance, he couldn’t simply enter racing as a learning experience. Instead, there was pressure to perform, internally and externally.
Woods has a team of employees who help him perform at his best. So, when he didn’t hit the numbers or achieve a high score, there was bound to be an air of disappointment.
But now, Woods was on his own. It’s the good, the bad, and the ugly all rolled into one.
While Woods’ new ride is certainly comfortable, he has his eye on some major events ahead. The UCI Road World Championships in Montreal are at the top of that list.
When it’s time to close, Woods knows what to do. He’s been there before, and he’s ready to do it again. Maybe not as intense as before, but definitely a more focused training approach than he does now.
Woods lives in Andorra with his wife and two children, 1,600 meters above sea level. He can climb up to 2,400 meters to participate in an altitude training camp, something he has done several times before. With the addition of Skimo to the Winter Olympics, who knows what could be next on Woods’ calendar. When asked about his goals for 2026, Woods said one of his goals is “to be a more present father.”
Sports may not be his top priority anymore, but whatever starting line Woods finds himself on in the future, you know he’ll be ready to throw himself in the deep end.
