The 2023 USA Enduro National Championship at Ride Rock Creek was my second enduro race ever. I had just gotten stitches out of my knee (for the second time last summer), and the wet conditions made a slip-n-slide out of the backcountry stages. I was terrified, but I was also hooked.

Coming into the Enduro National Championships this year, I had initially registered in age group rather than pro/elite, thinking that with only one year of racing on the gravity end of the sport, that there was no way I was “ready” for pro. But as the race got closer, I was unsettled by it. No, I didn’t feel ready to race pro. But every other race on my resume is in the pro/elite/open categories, and while most of those are XCO/XCM events, I still have a lot of race experience. Too, I’ve spent some time lately considering the lack of female participation in mountain bike races. Far too often, the pro/elite/open field is less than 10 women, and the sport/age group classes are even smaller. Whether it is true or not, in my mind, moving up to pro would “make space” for women even newer to the sport than myself in the age group category to show up and feel as if they had a chance to win (or at least be competitive). And I’m no stranger to getting last place.

So with less than three hours until the close of pre-registration, I called up USA Cycling and asked them to change my entry to the pro category.

I told myself that it would lower the pressure. Instead of competing for a podium in age group–which I knew would be a challenge in and of itself, having raced several of the other women before (and lost by a substantial margin), I was a nearly-guaranteed last place in pro.

The first day of pre-ride went decently. I slid out in a few greasy corners, cased a small road gap, and otherwise rode well through all of the backcountry stages. But it was HUMID. I felt like I was absolutely melting on the (relatively short) climb back to the top each time, and by time thunderstorms rolled in, and I tackled Dark Hollow (stage 5) en route to the car, I was no longer riding well. I rode the top half of the trail, but not cleanly, and then ended up walking most of the second half–feeling zero percent confident about riding several sections, especially while my nervous system was elevated by the rumbling skies above and my rush to get to the bottom.

That night, I reviewed my GoPro footage and reached out to two coaches I knew who were also at the National Championship event for advice on the sections of Dark Hollow that scared me. Both responded with helpful advice, and I set out that next morning with the primary goal of working my way through that trail…and then riding whatever else I had time for. Before I even got to the venue, I took some time to write down some process goals to try and get my head in a good space for riding. I’ve learned that if I have something controllable to focus on, it helps me push the fear to the edges–though on this particular day, I still struggled. I met my friend Ethan and his coach Jason at the top, and they patiently coached me through each section as I tried to force myself through the fear. I knew I just needed to relax and get off the brakes, but found it nearly impossible. I HATE when a trail scares me so much that I can’t ride it not because of a lack of skill, but because of the overwhelming fear. At the same time, I also know that I don’t ride well scared…or angry. So the combination of being terrified of the trail and angry at myself for being scared just doesn’t work. Eventually, Jason encouraged me to just walk the last section, go back, get some food, and then try it again later. We ended up taking the shuttle up one more time, and I told them to go ahead and do a full speed run down, and I’d meet them at the bottom. It was slow, but I made it, and rode everything (well, everything except the last log hop). Later that afternoon, I went back and rode Stage 2 once and Stage 6 (Bark Buster, probably my favorite trail in the race) twice, then called it a day.

Despite getting in a full run on Stage 5, which should have left me more confident, my sleep that night was interrupted frequently by my brain running through each trail, trying to visualize the lines and the feeling of riding everything well. I got up even earlier than necessary (for an already-early race start time), and took my process goals, simplified them to a few key words, and taped them to my bike. Then I ate breakfast, got ready, and headed to Ride Rock Creek. After a brief warm-up, I went up to the shuttle pick-up area, and did some mobility and breath work in the quiet before anyone else showed up. So much for reducing the pressure: I was incredibly nervous, and desperately searching for any shreds of confidence. At some point that morning, I was thinking back to BC Bike Race and ORAMM and days that I had felt really good on the bike–and every time, I had been confident in my ability to ride those trails well (even if I was riding them completely blind!). So that’s what I grabbed onto: the (perhaps false) confidence that I can ride these trails well.

Stages 1-4 (the backcountry stages) all went relatively well. I slid out a couple of times, but was able to maintain my focus and confident headspace through each stage. On each climb up, it was fun to chat with the other pro/elite women, and, honestly, their willingness to welcome me into the “group” was one of the highlights of the race. Coming in, I definitely felt like an imposter–but being able to get to know the other women I was racing helped to alleviate that throughout the day. Ironically, the thing that was stuck in my head all day was not a song, but a poem: “If,” by Rudyard Kipling.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same; 

I suppose that’s a throwback to my days as an English teacher, but not altogether irrelevant either! By Stage 5, I was nervous, but focused, and managed to clear the entire trail (THANK YOU to Jason, Ethan, and Harlan!), which put me on a high going into my favorite trail of the day, Stage 6.

At the end of the day, I knew that I had just raced my best enduro yet. For the first time ever, I had stayed confident and positive mentally for the entire day. My race wasn’t perfectly clean, but I rode well overall, and because I already expected to come in last, was just stoked on the fact that I had raced well.

In the end, I did get last (7th place) in pro women. I was 3:15 off the lead time, though, had I stayed in my age group, would have won by 20 seconds (a somewhat disappointing realization at first, when I could have had a stars & stripes jersey!). If I thought that last year’s race fired me up, this year’s tight results and “unlocked” mental game has me absolutely STOKED for this coming weekend’s enduro at Slatyfork and the potential to keep leveling up!