The Teachers

I had a bad race this weekend.  I got passed by most of the Pro/Cat 1 women's field shortly after the beginning of the race.  There was nothing I could do as each woman went by.  Nothing was wrong with my bike.  I was just flat. I felt surprised at first. "Really?" my brain said. "Those spin classes I have been doing are not enough?".  Then I kind of laughed at myself for thinking a spin class or two a week was going to prepare me to race against these women who are training hard most days to ride their bikes fast.  They are doing the right things to go fast.  I then settled in as best I could to race as well as I could.  I could relax and enjoy myself.  This I can do because of Ben Moody.

Ben Moody is the kind of teacher you are lucky to meet once in a lifetime.  He is probably the best athlete I will ever meet in my life.  I have seen him defy laws of gravity of his bike.  I have seen him keep up with Cat 1 roadies up climbs when he was a mountain bike racer. I have only heard legends of his downhill skiing abilities.  But perhaps his greatest gift is his ability to share his skills with other people. 

Ben teaches downhill skiing at a local private school. He has taken a number of athletes to the national level for downhill skiing.  It was Ben who taught me more about mountain biking on single track then perhaps anyone. He would ride in front of me just fast enough that I could follow his lines.  He rarely gave me instructions, he knew words did not help me much.  But the most important thing I learned from Ben was how to laugh at myself. 

1. Laugh at Yourself.
Ben often lead by example.  When I had one of the worst races of my life, Ben was nice enough to listen to me drone on about my tragedy.  My terrible race, the end of my mountain bike career, I was finished, washed up, done.  He finally took me swimming at a nice swimming hole so we could jump off waterfalls and I could have a bit of fun and stop feeling so sorry for myself.  He reminded me there was another race the next weekend and maybe I wouldn't do so badly at that one.

Now go forward one year when Ben had his worst race ever.  He had just found out he had athlete induced asthma and had a horrible first race at the first NORBA at Big Bear. The race began at 7000 feet and we had no time to acclimate.  His asthma made it almost impossible for him to breath in the high desert air.  He came in dead last.  We raced for California Dried Plums that year.  The results recorded his team as simply Team Dried.  When Ben saw it he honestly laughed for 10 minutes, and it became a running joke for our team for the rest of the year. 

Ben had enough experience and self confidence that the race result meant very little to him.  He was still funny, light hearted, a great team mate and no race could change who he was, for better of worse.  I am still learning from that example, but Ben taught me how to lose with a bit more grace and a sense of humour.

I have another great teacher in my husband Matt Betts.  Matt goes as hard as he can at whatever he does almost all the time.  If you ask Matt for racing advise you will get this answer in reply (and this is lesson #2).

2. Goes as hard as you can for as long as you can.
Matt gives everything 110%, maybe more.  He can do everything faster and better than me no matter what.  His brain just operates more quickly.  His body simply follows orders.  I think during my horrible race last weekend I heard his voice telling me to stop lallygagging and get going.  That and hearing a women behind me working so hard.  "I can't work that hard anymore," my brain thought, "but I can probably put out more effort than I am" and I would try and keep up with someone passing me just a little bit longer than I thought I could.

Matt can do the impossible.  He doesn't take no for an answer, he can drive himself to do whatever he really wants.  Yet he always appears calm and always takes time to be kind to those around him.  It is this amazing balance of kindness combined with extreme effort that makes me like him so much.  I continue to try and strive toward this balance daily and feel lucky to have this teacher with me everyday.

As I dug a little deeper and got into the single track (my happy place thanks to Ben) I ran into another great teacher of mine.  Mel Norland is riding super fast after only 2 years of mountain bike racing
and had passed me not long after the start.  Her chain had fallen off however, so I was able to see her again and ride with her in the single track.  Mel is much fitter than I am but I have more experience on the trails.  She let me in front and let me lead the way through the trails.  Then she was able to jump out onto the more open roads and ride fast again.  Mel has been teaching me how to learn.  Her mind is completely open.  She is willing to learn from everybody.  This brings me to my third lesson.

3. Learn from everybody.
Mel picks up things faster than most people and I am starting to understand why.  Every person she meets, she meets with openness, kindness and respect.  If they are doing something amazing she gets excited to see it and never jealous.  Then she watches, asks questions and learns from them whenever possible.  I believe it is her openness to learning from everyone around her, withholding judgement until she has tested out information for herself, that helps her learn so quickly.  I watch her pass me on a bike with ease now after training for only two years and I feel amazed and honoured that I am able to train with such a remarkable athlete.  It is truly amazing to watch her athletic development and know this is only the beginning.  She has learned (by being open to everyone around her) in two years what most folks could learn in five. 

Mel is also a very efficient person.  Every weekend Mel figures out how to get her two boys, and husband (all of whom are racing) to the race, find someone to watch the kids and feed everyone healthy, organic food that she has prepared.  She does this with an ease that is impossible to understand.  Then she is able to help me try and do the same thing, often finding me a babysitter as well or finding family members to drive us to airports and pick up my bike that needs major repairs.  I call her the Team Manager only half joking.  I couldn't race with my three kids without her.  She is teaching me how to do it.

I have had many great teachers in my lifetime, I have been very lucky.  From my amazing parents to my own children now.  But I couldn't finish my blog without mentioning Anna Healy.  Anna was the first woman I met who could keep up with "the boys".  In Fredericton, New Brunswick where I first started racing, there was a group of men who pretty much dominated the cycling scene.  They still do 15 years later.  There were people who rode bikes, and then there were the "Radical Edge Guys".  They raced bikes and were unimaginably fast.  There were no easy rides so there was no learning from them.  They set a high standard for what a racer was that served many of us well in time.

Racing bikes was something only they did as far as I could tell.  Then Anna came to town.  Anna was a Professional racer from Calgary, one of the fastest women in Canada.  She could actually go for a ride with "The Guys" and keep up.  But even more amazing than the fact Anna was that fast, was the fact she would ride with mere mortals like me.  "You should race" she said after we rode one day.  I gave her a long story as to why I couldn't.  "Well, you should probably race if you want to." She said. She gave similar advice to Catherine Pendrel over 10 years ago. Last year Catherine became the XC Mountain Bike World Champion.

Anna is now a mother of two boys, a triathlete/mountain bike racer, a computer scientist/mechanical engineer and still one of the most generous people I know with her time, knowledge and kindness.  I have yet to see her in a bad mood.

I will sum up Anna Healy's teaching in these words.

4. You should race if you want to.

But please, substitute whatever your dream is for the word "race".  Racing mountain bikes was just my dream that lead me to all of these amazing teachers and many others that I haven't yet mentioned (including the Grand Master who will require a post dedicated just to him). 

I will have more bad races and maybe even some good ones.  But the point of all this is that it doesn't really matter.  The journey racing bikes takes me on has lead me to amazing people from the moment I started to this day.  It leads me to people I want my children to be around and be like.  It leads me to people I want the whole world to know about.  It leads me closer to who I want to be.

Thanks for reading.

Why did I bring a Row Boat?

It was almost seven years ago that I had my first daughter.  We all have our ideas of how life will look after kids.  I am always surprised looking back just how wrong I can be, except when I look at other things I have tried to predict or plan.  It is possible that the one constant in my life is my amazing ability to have plans blow up.  Picture my plans as a little row boat.  Now picture life as a giant ocean.  Now put my row boat on the ocean.  Now add a hurricane. Or at least a small series of pretty good storms. Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

Now, the other thing I will say is that I wouldn't have things any other way. I think I may not mind riding out a hurricane in a row boat. Metaphorically speaking only, I actually get really motion sick but that is a story to save for a blog on traveling alone with children...

I am a mother now of three children.  I am also an athlete.  I think these things are both pretty natural to me.  As a kid I would run laps around my house just for fun, and spent most of my time practicing gymnastics in any space available.  As a mom I have quit just about everything so I can be with these kids.  They fascinate me.  Watching them learn about this world makes me learn about it all over again, but much better than I could have without them.  I want to spend as much time with them as possible before they don't want to anymore.

So I still need to fit in athletics.  Before kids I was a mountain bike racer.  I expected to continue after kids and did with Ava for half a season.  As a nine month old baby Ava would come to my races and we would work out child care, some loving friend or relative would have her after I fed her and pass her back shortly after I finished.  We were still breast feeding a lot as Ava did not love solid food and had a very loud scream like cry that would make most people fear babies for a good time (think years) after they heard it.  Most people had 2 hours before Ava would get angry that I had gone and then commence screaming.  I therefore had 2 hours to finish my races if I did not want to traumatize both friend/family and baby.  It took a few races before I thought this might not be right for my family at that moment.

Seven years later we have added two more kids, my husbands tenure track job, a move across the border and continent, various illnesses and mishaps.  So were does mountain biking fit in?  

On Exercise:

I began riding and running with Ava after she was 3 months old. Many naps took place in the moving crib (or the Chariot), as I got in work outs while she slept.  I also learned I could combine errands with these workouts, as there was a good chance I could roll right into a grocery store with a sleeping baby without missing a beat.  This is where Momthlete was born I believe.  I needed to get the family food, I wanted to work out still and be outdoors, and I had a baby.  I simply began combining all of these activities into one strangely efficient outing.  

As we had more kids I would simply add one more child to the mix and make a destination out of a kid friendly event.  Storytime at the library on Thursday became 5 km hard run to the library (I am always running late), storytime, bagel at the bagel store, 5 km run home as perhaps two kids napping.  If the older child needed exercise I would just throw the run bike in the chariot and walk some parts with Ava as she "biked" along.

I now live in Corvallis, OR, perhaps the most bike and child friendly town in America if not beyond.  Bike lanes and paths lead me everywhere in this town.  The town is home to more PhDs per capita than any other town/city in America.  Really, my husband is an ornithologist (he studies birds).  There are 32 ornithologists living in Corvallis.  That almost freaks me out. People are smart here and have created programs to make smart, happy, healthy kids here.  It may be the perfect place for a momthlete. There are always cool things to run my kids to in this town,

With the third baby, it did get harder.  Sometimes I would do 10 km runs with 120 lbs of kids in the Chariot. That thing that saved me was this:  For some reason kids know not to fight in the confines of a Chariot stroller. It works out so badly so fast, it just doesn't really happen. They also learn to bike on their own as it eventually gets better than sharing the seat with their sibling. 

Now I can actually do 10 km runs with just the toddler having her nap while the older two kids are riding beside me.  We stop and look at things along the way and may stop for candy or ice cream at the halfway point, but whatever works. We all love these trips.

On Racing:

Racing became pretty much limited to local events.  I never had another baby that was so attached to me so I was able to do some longer races.  My strange new fitness from my strange new workouts did not make me faster, but they kept me strong and my endurance was growing.  I ended up almost by accident doing a 100 mile mountain bike race in Oregon called the Cascade Creampuff thanks to Mike Ripley of Mudslinger Events.  It was the longest I had ever been on a bike period, but I finished without too much of a problem.  At that time 11 hours on the bike seemed a bit like a nice break from the daily Mom job.  A welcome change for the day so to speak.  Still I would rather be a Mom most days.

There is also a local 50 km running race in the McDonald Forest that borders my backyard.  When I get to run or bike alone, this is where I go.  The chance to run a huge portion of the forest in one day had captured my imagination for a few years thanks to Mel Norland, another momthlete who teaches me more and more everyday about how to race and be a mom.  Last year I finally got the opportunity to do the race.  I had pushed the kids around enough that year that I was pretty sure my body could handle it.  It was almost dreamy to run for almost 5 hours in a beautiful forest with someone providing all my food every 10 km.  After 6 years of being a stay at home mom I will a lot of crazy things for someone else to make my food.

I am still trying to race.  Still trying to stay in shape, but the row boat is not always on calm oceans.  It does not stay on a very steady course. And it seems that I neglected to bring a better boat to this ocean so, I just try and ride it out so to speak the best I can.  And I try to enjoy the adventures along the way.

Stay tuned for more. Thanks for reading.