Racing bikes is hard: physically, mentally, emotionally. But damn, it’s fun. And every race, teaches you something. Every single race. A couple of weeks ago I headed back down to Dufur, Oregon to race the Gorge Gravel Grind. I’d been there two weeks earlier to attend Serena Gordon’s Special Blend Gravel Camp. It was nice […]
Category: Bikes
Special Blend Gravel recap
I’m just home from such a great weekend of playing bikes at Special Blend Gravel in Dufur, Oregon. It’s a 3-day women’s gravel camp with excellent riding, opportunities for coaching and endless good vibes. Each day there was a different route and we split up into groups. There was no molasses group so I went […]
Reflections
This time of year is always such a delightful wind down. While I must confess that I’ve hardly been shoulder to the wheel these last few months with work being quiet, and training only just restarting, I still love the abyss of the week between Christmas and New Year. I get reflective for a few […]
Helping one another
Pedaling through the Squamish Valley, I often see a Squamish Nation pickup truck that says Public Safety on the door. I was stopped on the bridge that crosses the river past the Upper Squamish Valley, taking pictures, when I saw it again today. The bridge is narrow so I scuttled off it so as not […]
SBT GRVL 2023
Course Selection Last year I went to SBT GRVL with the All Bodies on Bikes team. I’d done Moab Rocks as my very first mountain bike stage race in the Spring and was taking on my first gravel race. I did the blue course which is a 100 miles long. Such a great day on […]
Learning about racing
I felt so good heading to Moab: bolstered by the confidence of almost 16 months of training and I’d done this race last year so had an idea what to expect. Last year it was my first race experience and I went in blind on the course, on riding in Moab, on racing – it […]
The stages of racing
The pre-race crazy stage I’m less than two weeks out from racing Moab Rocks for the second – and final – time. The current conversation in my head goes something like this. How can I work so hard and still be so shit – maybe I didn’t work hard enough – ugh – I should […]
The Road to South Africa & Wines 2 Whales
Wines to what? Wine 2 Whales is a 3-day mountain bike stage race in South Africa, put on by the same group that hosts the Cape Epic. The Cape Epic is a tortuous ordeal, high on suffering, low on frolicking and is not something I would ever aspire to do. Wines 2 Whales (W2W) is […]
Racing is mostly about Human Connection
SBT GRVL Recap Most of us arrived in Steamboat Springs, Colorado on Thursday evening having never really met before. We’d been on zoom calls once a month since we were selected for the All Bodies on Bikes team, but few of us had actually met in person. We were all signed up for different courses […]
20 days to go …..
There’s a big gap between “I should do that race next year, it sounds like fun” and the reality of “How can it be less than 3 weeks to the race?” Last November when I applied to join the All Bodies on Bikes team at SBT GRVL it seemed like a reasonably achievable goal. It […]