Remarkable Woman: Anna Laloë

(NEWS10) - Learning to ride a bike is a major milestone in independence for kids, but what if your parents couldn't afford one? Or didn't know how to teach you? NEWS10's second Remarkable Woman finalist is not only leveling the playing field in her county and beyond, she's blazing new trails with kids of all ages.

Monday nights during the winter you can find Anna Laloë leading a spin class at the Saratoga Regional YMCA, where she's also on the board.

"And then we'll shake out the legs a bit before we start our intervals," she instructed the class. "9 weeks 'til race 1, still gotta put a lot of work in."

This is not your average spin class: everyone here is part of Saratoga Shredders, the non-profit Anna started in 2020 to get more kids on bikes, at first girls only, "In my short mountain biking career there were only a few of us lined up at the start line as women in these elite categories, locally, and I thought gosh, if I could get a few more girls involved that would be amazing."

Fast forward 4 years and this spring hundreds of kids will hit the trails in girls and co-ed K-12 programs. Anna's also planted the seed for the future, opening doors for everyone to pedal happily.

"We Shredders, by reaching out to community members, we were able to raise over $40,000 to donate six different fleets of balance bikes to all of the elementary schools in Saratoga," she shared, "so now any incoming kindergartener or first grader across the entire district learns to ride a bike in kindergarten."

The group giving bikes and providing programming to the Schenectady Boys and Girls Club, the children of backstretch workers at the track and the Stomping Ground Camp as well. They also built a trail for the camp and make sure to take care of all the ones they use.

Anna teaches stewardship of the environment through hands on lessons, "One of the weeks in Shredders during the spring and the fall, we don't do any riding, we only fix the trails."

What started as a way to bond with her young daughters, has truly spun off into a community, growing by leaps and bounds.

"And that's what you do in life, right? You think about what is a safe thing to do, you surround yourself with safe people, and then you go ahead and make that jump if you can, so that's what we're trying to provide for them, are those opportunities to succeed in an adversarial world. It all creates this culture in Shredders that we know people around us want to succeed and that's a really, really nice feeling."