CERTIFIED!!!

Batshit crazy? Well, yes. But that’s not news.

News is that at the end of September, I earned my Level 1 Instructor certification from the Professional Mountain Bike Instructor Association (PMBIA). Now, you might ask - “but haven’t you been teaching mountain biking all summer?” Well, kinda. But I’ve just been volunteering/assisting at mountain bike camps under the close supervision of actual certified instructors. To actually get paid for this work, you need to be certified.

Don’t worry, I didn’t know “mountain bike instructor” was a thing, either. I mean, don’t you just get on the bike and pedal? You know, figure it out as you go along? Do whatever the dude in front of you is doing? That’s certainly one way to do it, but just like skiing, you can bumble your way through it and fall down a lot, or you can pay a few bucks for some professional instruction and have a lot more fun in the long run.

How did I get here?

I’ve been passionate about mountain biking since the mid-nineties, but it really started when I was just a kid. As a kid, it was hard to separate me from my bike - complete with a banana seat, rainbow spokes & purple glittery handlebar tassels. I thought I was hot shit when my mother and I got matching blue Schwinn 10-speeds and would ride together every weekend (I wasn’t always the coolest kid in town). In fact, I may have actually invented “gravel biking” at least 3 decades before it became popular when I abandoned the paved roads in favor of riding that 10-speed on the dirt right-of-way in the woods near my house. My obsession with singletrack started in grad school on trails just north of Boston (Lynn, Lynn, city of sin … you never come out the way you went in). I had no idea what I was doing, but it was fun as hell to try to keep up with the boys - and usually prove that I was just as tough as any of them. For all the times I changed jobs/careers, moved across the country, and fell in and out of love, mountain biking has been the one constant.

And then cancer happened. I stopped riding when I was diagnosed in November 2016 and didn’t get back on two wheels again until April 2022. Physically, I could have started riding again by the summer of 2018, but I just didn’t trust my body to do something so physically intense. I also believed the bullshit fed to me by the person I trusted most in the world when he told me I wasn’t <fill in the blank> enough to ride again. In April 2022, though, I took off on a solo road trip to see if I could get back on my bike. You know what? It was really fucking hard, but I did it. That feeling of incredible empowerment breathed life into my fire again, and set in motion a waterfall of changes.

April 2022, Flagstaff, AZ - my first time on the bike after 5 ½ years. 

It takes a village

I have to give a huge public shout-out here to my dear friend Carey, to whom I owe my new life on two wheels. She was the steady voice all along who said “its just riding a bike” when I was riddled with anxiety about not being able to ride this trail or that trail, or to pass this certification exam. She took me for my first ride at the RAT trails in Ridgway, showed me Buzzards Gulch in Montrose, and met up with me several times to ride harder things in Arizona. I likely wouldn’t have been able to muster up the courage to try any of those trails that I deemed “too hard” for my ability if it weren’t for Carey’s gentle but steadfast support and encouragement. She also got me a sweet deal on a new bike that turned up my riding a million notches.

Tucson, December 2023.  Thank you, Carey Ballard.  You helped me get my life back!

Another life-altering thing happened in October 2023. I attended a three day, women-only mountain bike camp in Sedona with Ladies AllRide (at the suggestion, of course, by Carey). At the time, I naively figured I knew everything there was to know about mountain biking because I’d been doing it for so long, but that it would be fun to hang out with some singletrack sisters for a few days. Those three days were absolutely transformational. It turns out that mountain biking isn’t just about using brute strength to power up and over things - there’s actual skill and technique to get you up and over stuff! Oh, and hanging your ass behind the seat isn’t the preferred way to go down a gnarly downhill, even if that’s what the dudes always said. Who knew?

So yeah, there were a lot of technical skills that I learned that weekend, and I definitely went away a much better rider because of it. But what made an even bigger impact was the encouragement, acceptance and celebration that came from the instructors and fellow students. There wasn’t any competition - we all cheered each other on, celebrated each other’s success, and laughed at our tumbles. The lead instructor for my group started the weekend by telling us all that we weren’t allowed to say “sorry” and that we needed to say “surprise” instead. As women, we apologize for everything, and when riding with dudes, most of us are always afraid we are holding up the group, or being too much of a “girl”, or being some other kind of burden. There is no “sorry” in mountain biking - just “surprise”. I now make this a rule in every lesson with which I’m involved, and often find my students correcting me!! Huge shout-out to my friend and amazing coach, Amo Gass, who co-owns the Sedona Mountain Bike Academy with her partner. If you find yourself in Sedona for some singletrack, you absolutely need to hire SMBA for a lesson - or hell, just make a trip out of it and go to one of their multi-day clinics. It will change your life, I promise.

After that weekend in Sedona, I was bursting with gratitude for all of the instructors, the experience, and the mere fact that such a company even exists. A few weeks later, I headed to the desert to spend two full months shredding singletrack in Utah and Arizona. In early December, I was hiking with Jeremy in Gold Canyon, Arizona when I stopped in the middle of the trail and said “I have a crazy idea, but I haven’t worked out the details yet, and I need to say it out loud before I explode". That idea was to become a mountain bike coach. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew that I wanted to give other women what Carey and Amo and everyone at Ladies AllRide had given me. I wanted to empower. I wanted to help other women trample those “not-enough” demons. I needed to pay it forward. Soon after that, I was on the phone with Amo asking all the questions, and getting all the answers. Carey shared her old PMBIA instructor manuals with me so I could start to prepare over the winter. I met up with Lindsay Richter, the owner of Ladies AllRide, to get her advice on how to get here. By February, I had my mission, and I signed up to volunteer at several of the Ladies AllRide camps so I could learn as much as I possibly could - and hopefully have a positive impact on other women riders in the meantime. I also rode nearly every day from March to September, on every kind of terrain from the machine-built Disneyland of Bentonville, to the unforgiving uphills of British Columbia, to the moss-covered slickfest of Bellingham. I practiced skills and drills in campground parking lots. Jeremy said I often pedal in my sleep. It’s an obsession, y’all.

So that’s how I came to be in Whistler, BC the last week of September for this 3-day PMBIA certification course. Whistler has a reputation of being the place that chews up and spits out even the best of riders, and this was not where I wanted to take the course. In true Type-A form, I got there several days early so I could ride the trails. There were a LOT of bridges. Slick, wet, slimy, moss-covered bridges.

I do not like bridges. We rode this bridge at least 6 times during the certification.

My very first ride in Whistler ended with me upside down under an elevated bridge, bleeding profusely from my thigh where my pedal dug into my leg. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

And this bridge was dry.  DRY!  WTF?

After that horrible ride, I became that annoyingly needy friend, sending texts to fellow coaches to the tune of “OMFG - why am I taking this course in Whistler? I’m gonna fail”. Everyone (looking at you Carey, Kim, and “the other” Lindsay) told me to just calm the fuck down, it’s just riding a bike, and I’ve been teaching this stuff all summer, I can do it in my sleep.

Did I listen? No, of course not. Instead, I went riding again and practiced drills in the campground even though it was only 40 degrees and raining. And on the last drill on the day before the exam, I felt my hip rip apart like it had back in 2013 when I was running hill sprints training for a marathon. The pain was excruciating. On the day before the exam I had spent all spring & summer preparing for.

Did I cancel the course/exam? Do you know me? I slathered on the Biofreeze, took a handful of Ibuprofin & Tylenol and cowboy’d up. It wasn’t until Day 3 that I became physically unable to perform some of the maneuvers, and the instructor told me he had seen enough of my riding to pass me on the riding portion of the certification. In the end, we all passed and are PMBIA’s newest Level 1 instructors!

Yes, I was the only female, and old enough to be everyone’s mother.  

So now what? I don’t know, other than to say that I’m committed to paying it forward. I’ll empower women to be confident and playful on two wheels. I don’t know if I’ll do that back home in Colorado, or out on the road, or maybe a combination of the two. For now, I’m focused on rehabbing my hip, and getting to the desert so I can ride for FUN this fall.