[1] She became the U.S. women's individual time trial champion in 2004, and later represented the United States in two editions of the Olympic Games (2004 and 2008), where she narrowly missed the podium twice in the same event.

Before her professional cycling career, Thorburn had been a cross-country runner at Grinnell College in her native state Iowa, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry.

An old knee injury that sidelined her running career turned her sights to cycling, and eventually, she was encouraged by some of her friends to join the university's club team.

Upon returning to a relatively leisure schedule from her limited medicine studies, Thorburn started riding for the Webcor Builders Women's Amateur Cycling Team in 2002.

She also currently resides in Menlo Park, California with her husband Ted Huang, a prominent Mistral windsurfer and a former two-time Olympian (1996 and 2000) from Chinese Taipei.