Month: August 2021

Grin and bear it

~ reluctantroadie ~ 2 Comments

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to race the Bear Jaw Groove race. Well, I did! The race was yesterday and my four-person team did splendidly. The race was held at the Arizona Nordic Village and the race format is simple: ride as many laps as you can in 6 hours. Each lap is 11 miles long. Obviously, the solo and duo team riders had it a bit harder than the four-person teams because they don’t have as long of a break in between laps. It was pretty easy to tell which riders were the solo riders because they were all super skinny, wore spandex, and had intense gazes. Kind of like the solo male winner:

He rode 77 miles, i.e. 7 laps, in 6 hours. That’s almost 7,000 ft of climbing. If I worked that hard during a ride, I’d eat ALL the fries.

I got into Flagstaff around 3:15pm on Friday. I thought I was beating the traffic, but quickly learned that move-in day for Northern Arizona University (NAU) was that day. Traffic in town was SO BUSY. I got to my airbnb and decided against going downtown for dinner because I didn’t want to face traffic again. Instead, I walked to the closest Safeway and picked up some items for dinner and lunch the next day.

My airbnb was a cute little bedroom in a single-family house with its own private entrance. The family owns a few chickens and the coop is right next to the airbnb entrance. I really enjoyed meeting the chickens and hearing their quiet “clucks” during my stay. (When I told the chickens I don’t eat meat, they seemed to appreciate that fact, haha!)

  • My cute little airbnb
  • The airbnb chickens!

Race day! For those of you who’ve never been to a mountain bike race before, it’s basically a big party. Yes, there’s an actual race, but there are also things like food trucks, vendors, live music, and activities for families such as a kids’ bike race. I was with a group of ladies from Hawesaholics Babes Ride On (HBRO), a ladies’ mountain biking group in Phoenix. We all arrived at the race site by 8am, set up our home base, and got our bikes and ourselves ready to go.

  • Race swag
  • HBRO racers right before the race started
  • My four-person team
  • Some of the vendors’ tents
  • The finish line!
  • Our HBRO area….lots of bikes!

Like I said earlier, the race course is 11 miles long. For the four-person teams, one racer rides the course at a time. When one racer finishes, the next racer will start riding. I was the second person to go on my team, which worked well for me. I didn’t have to deal with the mass start and I had a bit more time to get mentally prepared.

  • My new Canada gloves. I may be an American citizen now, but I’ll never forget my Canadian roots!
  • Right before I set off for my lap

The race course is not a technical one, i.e., riders of all levels can ride this course. My team pre-rode the course a couple of weeks before the race, so we had a good idea of what to expect. The most annoying part about the course is the climbing; almost half the course is uphill. It’s one of those steady grinds that seem to go on forever. Not fun. But, after the climb, the rest of the course is mostly downhill, which is way better! I had a couple of goals for the race: 1) beat my pre-ride time of 1 hour 40 minutes (I felt like my pre-ride time was slow because the ride was a big group ride and there were lots of stops to get people acquainted with the route) and 2) do my first lap in 1 hour 15 minutes. I met both goals!

I’ve had a few people ask me what I thought of the course. Aside from my course description above, my top three highlights — in no particular order — during the race were:

  • riding through the Aspen trees (I WISH I could have taken a picture! It was so pretty there!);
  • hearing a guy behind me yell “I was trying to keep up with you but you’re totally bombing the downhill!” (TRY HARDER, DUDE). Oh, FYI, “bombing” refers to racing down a trail as fast as possible. I left that guy in the dust. Literally!; and
  • pedaling as fast as I can towards the finish line in case a photographer was there to capture the moment (I wanted to look intense…you know, like a REAL racer).

My whole team did really well and we were very happy to learn that we placed first in our category!

  • Right after the race ended. We decided to wear our matching tank tops for the post-race photo. 🙂
  • Right after the awards ceremony
  • Cool medal! It’s also a bottle opener!

Ok….so full disclosure….we were the only team in our category (four-person team, women). HAHAHA! But hey, it’s still cool that we did the race and even cooler that we have a souvenir (i.e., medal)!

I had a really fun time and I’m glad I did this race. I got to know some awesome ladies better and we are all doing another race together in December! Stay tuned for more training and event stories!

Summer, you can leave now.

~ reluctantroadie ~ 1 Comment

It’s mid-August, which means it’s STILL summer in Phoenix….which means “monsoon season,” which means hot and humid. July and August are the “monsoon” months and the Phoenix area usually gets most of the rain it gets for the year during these two months. I’m good with watering the desert; after all, the desert needs water too! Also, rain helps keep forest fires at bay, which is a very good thing. However, all this watery monsoony goodness means humidity and when you combine humidity with high heat….yuck. I’m still trying to get out and ride most mornings, but I’m not gonna lie….it’s really difficult to get up early and ride, when you know you’re going to be SOAKED at the end of the ride. And not because of rain. Because of sweat.

However, a couple of distractions have been helping to keep me on my bike. The first distraction is a little race coming up on August 21 called Bear Jaw Groove. This race is a homegrown event and takes place just outside Flagstaff. This is the 2nd year for the race and it’s fun to support a local event and be part of the event’s formative years. Bear Jaw is a 6 hour event during which solo riders, duos, and teams of four ride as many course laps as possible. The course is an 11 mile loop which starts and ends at the Arizona Nordic Village. One of the cool parts of the course is the “Aspen corridor,” which is a section that winds through an Aspen forest. I’m part of a 4 person ladies’ team and we’re all doing this race for fun and to get out of the Phoenix heat!

The other distraction is a monthly challenge issued by the Hawesaholics Babes Ride On (HBRO) Facebook group. I joined this group at the end of 2020 and have met a ton of ladies who ride. HBRO is a local group, so it’s easy to find someone to ride with. Each month, the HBRO founders post a monthly “clean this challenge,” which is basically a technical obstacle or more difficult trail to work on for that month. Those who take on the challenge are supposed to record a video of their attempts at “cleaning” (i.e., clearing, riding successfully) the challenge and the video with the most Facebook “likes” wins a prize. It’s a fun way to work towards a goal. The “clean this challenge” for August is not bike related; instead, it’s a fun little obstacle course at a local park (think of a very watered down American Ninja Warrior type of course with things like monkey bars and a “Spiderman” style net ladder). Participants are supposed to record and time their best attempt and the video with the most “likes” will win the prize (this month’s prize is an insulated mug).

As soon as I saw the August challenge, I thought it would be funny to put a spin on it. What if I got a few other ladies to do the challenge with me….but instead of attempting the obstacle course “normally,” we pretend it’s an obstacle course for a bike? I suggested the idea to a few friends and things took off from there. The result of all that brainstorming and video shooting is right here in this YouTube link: click me for a laugh.

To give you an idea of the sheer ridiculousness of the video, here’s a picture of me in my protective gear (yes, it is a bit much for a playground obstacle course, but it served its purpose)! Let me know what you think!

(Ready to roll! I am wearing a Kevlar helmet, “facegoggles,” and downhill body armour. The helmet is bullet-resistant and weighs about 10 pounds. I was SO GLAD I didn’t have to wear that thing for very long. The “facegoggles” are more like a face shield and quite effective at keeping people at a distance. They’re not as breathable as regular face masks, though. Both the helmet and facegoggles were borrowed. The body armour is my SAT’s from his downhill mountain biking days. I think I look like a cross between GI Joe and a stormtrooper.)