Idyllwild Spring Challenge: Mountain Mama

My five-year-old likes to boast to his siblings that he can be President. Of the United States.

Technically, he can, while my two older children cannot, because they do not have actual birth certificates. After the recent election, I doubt that their Certificates of Birth Abroad would qualify them.

But really, can my ambitious boy lead the nation someday? Who knows. At the moment, he thinks he can.

I never thought I could ride a mountain bike down the face of a five foot boulder. But at Saturday's Idyllwild Spring Challenge, I did. And jumped over creeks, rocketed down gullies, bunny hopped logs and splashed through creeks.

After months of sedate urban lap races, I was finally back in the mountains.

I've never been to Idyllwild before, and drove nervously up the hill Friday night. My maiden voyage on the course promised a welcome infusion of technical single track, though, bought and paid for with nearly 4000 feet of climbing over nineteen beautiful view miles.

The tireless race organizer, Katie Hedrick, helpfully posted topos and trail descriptions on the Idyllwild Cycling site. The morning before the race, I got a big cup of really bad coffee from a little diner, and pored over the contour lines. Up. Down. Right. Left. Up. Up. More up.

I am not a pure climber. I have a lousy strength to weight ratio. In a sport where hill ability is measured in mere grams, elite female racers underweigh me by fifty pounds just getting out of bed in the morning. In terms of wind resistance, my long legs do provide an edge on long flat stretches; I have effectively neutralized that advantage by riding a low geared bike.

And then there's that training thing with three kids and a job, real estate issues that necessitate both parents working, health issues, and pretty soon, I've talked myself out of public office.

Enter something called "ability belief." If you think you can't, you won't. Ever.

Superstitiously chanting engine songs may not guarantee a first place medal, but it doesn't hurt. I may not have preridden the course, but my husband did teach me to read a back country map. That, I can do.

So I mosey my front tire up to the duct tape starting line with a pretty big crowd of women, including two (two!) other single speed women. Abundant sunshine, cool temperatures, and the intoxicating scents of pine and sage wafting over the Spandex. Can we go yet?

We made the right hand turn out of Hurkey Creek Campground, down along a creek bed. When the track started popping Sagebrush style moguls, I knew it was going to be a good day.

I took off, doing my best Sue Fish moto impression. I was well ahead of the pack. For about three minutes. Then we started winding toward the summit.

Dorothy Wong, pro cyclocross racer, passed me going uphill. She was legitimately running with her bike slung over her back, not employing my patented slow speed twinkle toes jog.

Bye bye, Dot. A dedicated advocate of women's cycling, she has doubled the amount of female cyclocross racers in the last year, and has set her sights on getting more women out on mountain bikes. Watch out, world.

The other single speed woman passed me next, riding her bike up a hill that I had to hike.

Great. Oh, and looky here, there go a batch of geared women.

Course strategy caffeined int0 my brain, I repeated my think-I-can lyrics.

Patience, patience, patience.

Lesson learned from last week, I got off and pushed the bike well before I tipped over from exertion. The first long single track climb finally ended, we cruised along Johnson Meadow, and then the fun began.

I was not disappointed. With names like Tunnel of Love and Exfoliator and Rage Thru the Sage, those trails demanded every ounce of skill and courage I possesed, and then some more after that. Rocks, turns, drops, stumps of death, and ruts that could swallow my van. When the going wasn't tough, it was don't-try-this-at-home fast. Fast, I tell you.

Honestly, ask anyone who rode with me in 2005 how frightened and clumsy I was. There's a ledge drop by my house that I used to sit at the top of for long minutes, trying to make myself ride down it. I took a girlfriend there once and she cleaned it on the first try, on her first bike ride, ever. It was another year before I could make myself roll over the lip.

The magic thing about racing, the intangible something that keeps me coming back, is the way it transforms that fear. Am I going to give in to it and waste the entry fee, or am I going to let go of the brakes?

In his discussion of ability belief, author Gavin de Becker says this, "no single influence is more powerful than social proof, seeing someone else succeed at the thing you might have initially believed you could not do."

I have followed so many people down hills I could not would not never have ridden in real life. In a race, if someone sails over a Jaws style rock garden, I don't have time to think about whether I should follow. Over the years, I have come to love double arrow signs.

Take me home, country roads.

I eventually passed most of the people who dusted me at the start, came in second to Dorothy, and ahead of most of the women of any age on any bike riding that same course. As far as the business end of the Idyllwild Spring Challenge, I pretty much rode like a rock star. If I do say so myself. Just this once, I promise. Because no one was there to see it.

On a loop that long, you often end up riding by yourself. You, yourself and you... and your memories of every hero who ever rode in front of you.