Just Keep Pedaling

24 hours fast in the saddle makes her anything but a dull girl

Midnight is the witching hour for most, but not me. On this night, it happened closer to 11:15 pm, as I clocked mile 97.

I ride into camp exhausted, dirty, grumpy, aching. I literally can't feel my lower back, and I'm hoping the stabbing pain in my neck is a spike, so it can be removed.

"There's blood on your knee. Did you fall?"

"I don't remember," I reply. And I really don't.

A few months ago at the age of 45, I decided on a goal so ridiculous, I told very few people. But the opportunity loomed, right there, just east of the little train town of Gallup, NM, where the mountain bike gods placed the USA Cycling 24-Hour National Championships. I watched the pros ride in 2013, and my first thought was, "That's a whole other level of crazy." But I admired them, and I wanted to be in the crazy club because it was so extreme, painful and so beautiful all at the same time. Imagine, it's 3 in the morning, you have 160 miles behind you, and you've just eaten a wondrous meal of rehydrated powdered protein mix, a brown banana, a handful of pecans and some beet juice. Fifteen seconds of panic has just passed as you learn that tree stump off to the right was not a bear. Your heart rate normalizes at 140. Then you reach the Burma Trail, two miles of screaming downhill in the dark with one working light on your handlebars to guide the way. Maybe 25 miles per hour is too fast in the black pitch of night, but you can't slow down since it's your only rest and someone might be on your tail. Or maybe it's a bobcat (that you can't see because you've lost a contact). Ridiculous crazy.

Having given up running due to injuries, I've been riding mountain bikes since 2012, and I'm hooked. As the saying goes, "just as addictive as cocaine and twice as expensive." Besides the satisfaction of struggling up the mountains and the ecstasy of hurtling myself down on nothing more than some aerodynamically forged metal and some bolts, the thrill of experiencing the beauty and solitude of nature keeps me pedaling.

I've realized that even the worst day on the bike is survivable as long as I can hear a bird or a stream trickle, see a cactus bloom or watch the clouds roll in. It's the old bait and switch, except there's no switch. In running, I felt exposed as a female with the super-short shorts and the long, lonely roads. Ever had some jerk roll down his car window and yell, "Want a ride? I'll give you a ride!" then break out in maniacal laughter? Charming. Then there's the coach who suggested I needed to lose weight when I failed to qualify for NCAA Nationals in the 10,000 meter run. (I was 5'5" and 112 pounds at the time.) Of course, let's not forget the med student who pinched my arm and, based on his millisecond assessment of my body fat, told me I would not make it to the Olympics.

OK, so he was right, I didn't make it, but my left Achilles should take the blame for that one, not my jelly triceps. Athletic achievement is not formulaic. I've always maintained that success in highly competitive sports is a crapshoot. Talent and hard work can only get one so far, and it's the athlete who avoids turning her ankle, or who lives in a competitively rich area, or who doesn't eat a bad burrito the night before the big meet, who succeeds. Throw in gender bias and childbearing, and the opportunities for women dwindle significantly. After law school, working, marriage, kids and more work, my time was running out, and I truly began to believe that if I didn't escape the expectations of my gender now, the naysayers and disbelievers would never be avenged. My 20-year-old self needed vindication. So did the young lady running with mace in her hand and the girl trying to ignore the catcalls as she ran intervals on the track. Having two daughters of my own, my awareness of the young tenderness I still harbored inside was palpable.

And so I pedal. It's about as close to flying as one can get on the ground. Sometimes you fly, seeking freedom, and it's peaceful and magnanimous, simultaneously, like ice. Sometimes you dive, seeking the depths of unknown courage, and it's terrifying and awakening, together, like fire. And then you see a deer nibbling a flower. It's as simple as that.

Simple like Santa Fe, and complicated too. Having lived on the East Coast and in the Deep South for the first 30 years of my life, the openness and expansiveness of Santa Fe provides me a stark but healing backdrop to what held me so painfully quiet and gusseted. "Healing" is self-explanatory, "stark" in that it's my canvas to paint.

Most cities have a particular construct that serves to define the people who live there. Think "Southern Belle," "New Yorker," "Midwesterner," and stereotypes fly up like startled quail. Santa Fe holds no prototypical citizen, and no real caricature comes to mind. I have no two friends that could be confused for one another, and surprisingly, I actually have very little common interests with those I call my "best friends."

We are connected by the same calling. My Santa Fe tribe seems to have been lured here by a silent siren song, but instead of smashing us on the rocks of convention and expectation, the song gives us the power to expand and grow and give back again, like a river, infusing us with nutrient-rich loam and then carrying our nourished labors outward in rafts of sacredness and gratitude.

I find that symbiotic taking and giving in the climb and the dirt of the trails surrounding our city. Similar to the brown, brazen roots of the piñon, the mountain and desert trails grasp outward from Santa Fe, giving it support and groundedness, providing it the necessary structure to support the city's unfettered and beautiful psyche. The trails beckon to me: come out, come play, come breathe, come live. Then, I pedal home, tired, clear, fed and fulfilled.

Yet I'm anything but clear as I reach 11:15 pm on race night, just over the halfway point. I discuss my current reality with David Bell, my pit crew, soigneur, chef, dresser, aid station, photographer, bike tech, sponsor and friend. I am bleeding and coughing up dirt. I've lost a contact and have no feeling in my right hand. The pain in my neck and upper back endlessly stabs at my brain, even though I've ditched my water pack and helmet light. My bottom is so raw that, well, we just won't go there.

"Do you want to sleep for three to four hours?"

I look down at my smelly jersey: Mellow Velo. It's clean compared to the Shroud of Gallup I've created in trying to keep my face fresh and dirt-free as the hours and miles roll by. I am definitely not "mellow," but in my soul-searching struggle to accomplish this goal of becoming the oldest female national cycling champion, I breathe. Bell and Mellow Velo took me on last November and believed in me and my abilities. Bell didn't balk at my age, nor my crow's feet. He didn't even flinch at my cesarean belly or the fact that my race schedule depends on whether I can get child care. I am humbled by his support of a dream, the realization of which earns a medal, a $75 jersey and our names in the record book. But it's there, forever. I wanted it there, forever.

"No, David, I do not want to sleep. I'm going back out there in five minutes. I really want this."

"I know you do; I was just hoping I could sleep for three to four hours."

I would wake him up for some eggs and bacon in about two hours, and at the 24th hour of my race, after 203 miles, depleting every last energy source my body had to offer and getting a lift back to camp from the forest service, I finally put those requited girls to bed, took my drug test and hopped up on the podium as 24-hour solo singlespeed national champion.

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