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This is an excerpt from our cover interview with Lizzie Deignan from the July 2020 issue of Procycling magazine, on sale now (opens in a new tab).

As John Lennon sang, life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans. Lizzie Deignan has had her fair share of life in the past few seasons, with the whereabouts business, the birth of her child, and now this COVID-19 crisis.

"I'm a very plan-oriented person, but I can't plan anything. That was difficult," she told Procycling in a WhatsApp video call from her home in Harrogate.

"I'm a very plan-driven person, but I can't plan anything," she told Procycling in a WhatsApp video call from her home in Harrogate.

Dignan loves planning. In her autobiography, Steadfast, she writes about her color-coded, handwritten training plans. I first interviewed her after her 2016 World Championship win, a masterpiece of perfection and control. She told me so with a smile, but I made up my mind not to be late for the interview.

But she has had a few ups and downs lately. It was fortunate to some extent that she and her family were visiting family and staying at their home in Harrogate just before the lockdown could have complicated their move from Monaco. For example, they were not restricted to outdoor activities as many of their peers had experienced in France, Spain, and Italy. Harrogate has a garden, more than many of the apartments in Monaco. At the same time, he envies his Dutch colleagues. 'The Dutch seem to be living quite normal lives now. They go for a drive, they take out coffee. I haven't had a cup of coffee with frothy milk for a long time," she says wistfully. Recent events have given her plenty of time to think.

"Day to day life hasn't changed that much to be honest. It's made me realize that we are very boring people," she jokes.

"Professional athletes have very simple routines. Not being able to go out for dinner or lunch is not that different from everyday life. Day-to-day life is fine. It's when you look at the bigger picture that things get overwhelming."

"I have a lot of ups and downs. I'm either optimistic or completely doomed, or somewhere in between. It's a roller coaster ride between being optimistic and thinking I'm going to be okay and thinking, 'God, what the hell is going on in the world that I brought my daughter into?'"

This is an excerpt from Lizzie Deignan's cover interview in the July 2020 issue of Procycling magazine, on sale now.

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