Lizzie grew up competing. Football came first — a long career as a competitive player from childhood through her mid-twenties, the kind of athlete who never needed an outside reason to train hard. When that chapter closed, cycling filled the gap. What surprised everyone — including Lizzie — was how quickly the gap disappeared.

Within eighteen months of taking it seriously she was racing at UCI Continental level with DAS-Hutchinson, competing against professional riders at events like the Tour de Suisse and Dwars door Vlaanderen. The raw fitness from years of football translated. The competitive instinct was never going anywhere.

The crossover wasn't just physical. Football had given her something that road cycling amplified — the ability to suffer in a group, to read a race, to pick the right moment. Those instincts would prove just as useful on a gravel course in the North Yorkshire Moors as on any road race circuit.

In 2024, a crash in Belgium ended Lizzie's road season before it had properly begun. The damage was severe: three pelvic fractures and a sacrum fracture. Nine months of rehabilitation followed — months of not riding, not racing, not competing, just rebuilding from the ground up.

For an athlete who defines herself through physical challenge, that kind of enforced stillness is its own test. But Lizzie came back stronger in every measurable sense — and with a renewed clarity about what kind of racing she wanted to do. The crash didn't redirect her career. It accelerated it.

The return to competition produced the most remarkable results of her career. Former Sean Yates introduced her to gravel riding during that recovery period, and almost immediately the fit was obvious. The long days, the technical terrain, the self-sufficiency — all of it suited her perfectly.

September 2025. British National Gravel Championships, Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire. A 113.6km course, 2,200m of elevation. Lizzie Hermolle's third ever gravel race.

She attacked on the final climb — past Georgia Taylor-Brown, the Olympic triathlete and pre-race favourite — and held it to the line. National Champion. Third gravel race. The result made national headlines and opened a conversation Lizzie had been quietly building toward for years.

That same year she also won the National Masters A title at the Bath CC Women's National B Road Race, took the Peaks 2 Day Stage 1 in sub-zero conditions and led the general classification into the final day. Multiple national-level wins in a single season, across disciplines, after nine months off the bike.

In March 2026, Lizzie set the fastest known time for a woman to complete an off-road Everesting — 11 hours 5 minutes, 65 laps of Sheep Pasture Incline in Derbyshire, 8,848 metres of climbing across 157km. She beat Emma Pooley's previous record by nearly two hours.

The attempt was as brutal as it sounds. Lap after lap of the same grinding climb, through the night and into the morning, on gravel. At one point — somewhere deep into the small hours — a man's dog ate her donuts. All she wanted was a donut.

She finished anyway. That's the point.

2026 is a full commitment to gravel. The UCI Gravel World Series, the Gravel Earth Series, and at the end of it all, Badlands — 800km across the Andalusian desert with 16,000m of climbing. Ten target events across nine countries. The biggest season of her career.

She came into the year in form. The Sahara Gravel stage race in Morocco produced a stage win, two further podiums, and 3rd overall. The Sierra Nevada altitude camp delivered weeks of altitude stress before Traka. Everything is pointed at the top of the sport's gravel calendar.

Working with Jacob Tipper at JT Performance Coaching, backed by Merlin Cycles and Ventum Racing, Lizzie has the support structure around her to compete at the highest level. The training data backs it up: 8,700km and 116,000m of climbing already in 2026, consistently averaging 24 hours a week in the saddle.