This is my kind of bike race

That title is misleading. There's been no bike racing yet. The event actually starts Sunday morning. Keith and I seeded ourselves in the bottom half of the recreational racers, so we begin our 30-kilometer, 1,300-meters-of-climbing time trial in Fernie at 11:15 a.m. After that moment, this week is going to be hard; real hard. I look at the elevation profiles and kinda wish I could just leave my bike at home, because it's going to be a heavy thing to carry. But it will be fun. I'm really looking forward to TransRockies.

Meanwhile, I am already settling into the posh lifestyle of the race. I drove up to Banff on Friday so my car would be near the finish when the race ends. The drive between Missoula and Banff is one of the more spectacularly scenic 400-mile stretches of road I've ever had the privilege to gawk at while creeping in a line of 50 vehicles behind an oblivious 70-year-old driving 35 mph in a red Mustang. I stopped in Kalispell to have lunch with Danni, and borrowed several jerseys from her (including one Good-n-Plenty jersey; not quite as appropriate as Sour Patch Kids, but close.) Ate steelhead and stuffed mushrooms with Keith, Dave W. and Jason the Ski Stop guy in Banff. This morning Keith and I made our way back to Fernie, but not before stopping for four hours at his friend's cabin on a lake in southern British Columbia. We swam and tried out the standing paddle board and went on a boat cruise around the lake amid perfect temperatures and sunlight. It's been a small taste of what it's like to go on a normal vacation; I've almost forgotten. The gorging and relaxation has been short-lived, but appropriately so. I can't wait to start the bike adventure.

Yes, this is going to be quite hard, but don't cry for me. There will be plenty of grilled salmon and massages at the end of the trail.

Dear Canada, fear me again

My TransRockies partner, Keith, and I during our top-secret, race strategy building retreat in Glacier National Park

A couple of years ago, before heading north to Whitehorse, Yukon, to ride solo in a 24-hour race, I wrote a letter to the country at large called "Dear Canada, fear me." Since I seem to attend a summer mountain bike race that begins in Canada at least once a summer, I decided to update it.

Dear Canada,


Jill Homer again. I’m sure you remember me. I’m the 2008 solo women’s winner and current women’s record holder of the 24 Hours of Light. What do you mean you haven’t heard of that race? It’s in Whitehorse. You know, the capital of the Yukon. It’s a burgeoning territory that is home to more than 30,000 Canadians. Yes, I realize that’s a population density of 0.11 people per square mile, but I’ll have you know that the 24 Hours of Light is brutal enough for the masses. Competitors sometimes ride wearing nothing more than fairy wings and tighty whiteys when it’s 33 degrees out, through thigh-deep mud, dodging sheets of lightning and sleet, in June. Teams also used to receive a bonus lap if somebody raced the midnight lap completely naked. I think the prudish ways of the south crept up and the Yukoners did away with that practice, but you get the picture. The 24 Hours of Light is the real deal. And among the at least five women who have raced it in the solo category, I am clearly the best.

Why should you care? Because I am returning once again to race in your beautiful — if gapingly empty — country. You may have heard of this one — TransRockies. I’ve committed to pedaling 400 kilometers of punishing, harshly elevated trails across the Canadian Rockies in seven days of structured stages. They used to bill this stage race as “The Toughest Mountain Bike Race in the World.” That was probably before self-supported endurance racers called them out for serving steak and grilled salmon and offering "relaxation expos" where racers enjoy nightly massages as personal mechanics clean their bicycles. Now TransRockies is just billed as “Canada’s Best Mountain Bike Adventure”

Despite the downgrading of overall hardcoreness, TransRockies will be, by far, the largest race I have ever participated in. There are about 500 people signed up for the partner-team race and its less-social, three-day offshoot, TR3. I’m pretty sure I could count all of the participants in every race I’ve ever competed in — foot, ski and bike — and combine them, and still not net 500 people. Plus, TransRockies has something like $30,000 in prizes. There will probably be pros there! That should make me feel all sorts of intimidated; and I’ll be honest — it does. But I am pushing that sentiment aside, because I’m not coming to Canada to be intimidated by people whose motto for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games was “With Glowing Hearts.” (Seriously? That’s just a sharp jab away from “Wimpy Bleeding Hearts.”) That is become I come from a city whose 2002 Winter Olympic mascots were named “Faster! Higher! Stronger!” (USA! USA!) And that is what I shall be!

What do you mean it doesn’t work like that? My TransRockies partner, Keith (who is Canadian, by the way, so don’t accuse me of being a nationalist), already discussed our strategy in detail during our top secret strategy meeting, strategically held on U.S. soil. “All we need to do,” Keith said, “is go faster than everyone else.” It seemed simple enough to me. I can ignore my pedestrian technical skills, my overwhelmingly relaxed style, my penchant for avoiding pain and crashing, and a summer of training that consisted solely of long slow distance, because all I have to do in TransRockies is go faster than everyone else. All 500 of them. Easy.

Actually, I was hoping Keith would haul me with a tow rope, but he just informed me this is no longer legal in TransRockies. What gives, Canada? When did you start demanding personal accountability and independence? That doesn’t sound like a good socialist strategy at all. Oh yeah, that’s right, you’re not really a socialist country even though Glenn Beck says you are. Whatevs.

Anyway, you’re probably thinking by now that I don’t sound like all that scary of a race threat. That’s because I’m not. I mean, I am the women’s record holder of the Tour Divide, which also, it just so happens, to bill itself as “The Toughest Mountain Bike Race in the World.” But all that makes me good at is turning a half pound of Sour Patch Kids and seven packages of Grandma’s Cookies into 150 miles of race nutrition, and at carrying my bicycle on my shoulder through endless miles of mud (come to think of it, this skill may come in handy in TransRockies.) But the point is, I’m just another ’merican who simply wants to come to Canada to have a great mountain bike adventure and a lot of fun. And as long as I accomplish that, I win.

Sincerely,
Jill, formerly from Juneau, now comfortably settled just below the crushing, terror-inducing terrain of the Canadian Rockies

I take crashing way too personally

My friend Dave Nice from Hurricane, Utah, is in town for a summer vacation to the "cool" temps of the "north" (to which I laugh and mop pools of sweat from my arms before applying more SPF 50.) I returned to Missoula on Sunday, still sleep deprived and a bit addled from the weekend, but rallied for a scorching mid-afternoon ride on the Lolo Loop.

I like this loop because it allows me to hide my secret shame — that my very most favorite thing to do on a mountain bike is climb long dirt roads into pleasantly tired legs and huge views. I can spin up the dirt track for hours, happy and content, and my friends have no idea I'm enjoying myself so much because they think we are just putting in the obligatory elevation gain in order to rip rocky singletrack down the long descent. Then, after 3,000 or 3,500 vertical feet, Dave Nice can launch into his crazy fixie finessing of rugged rock gardens, I can creep gingerly around hairpin switchbacks and step around rock ledges when no one is looking. In the end, we both ride away happy.

I have not yet developed the mountain bike pride. I didn't even learn the meaning of the word "dab" until earlier this summer, when a friend in Anchorage mentioned my usage of this most useful move whilst ascending a small, nearly vertical wall at Mooseberry Mesa. "Are you kidding?" I replied. "If I couldn't dab, I wouldn't even bother. " The way I saw it, I at least had tried and rode halfway up the hill, and I wouldn't have tried at all if taking my feet off the pedals was absolutely forbidden. Same goes with hike-a-bike. Who cares? I have walked behind people as they pedal for many hundreds of yards. They're absolutely dying and I'm breathing easy, and we're both moving the same speed, 3 miles per hour. As I said, I lack the mountain bike pride. I love wheels for their advantages, but I shrink away from their difficulties. I while I have gleaned enormous personal satisfaction from "cleaning" a "gnarly" move, at least 95 percent of the time, I am too timid to try. So my mountain bike technical skills have been extremely slow to develop.

(Photo stolen from Dave C.)

Since I do, honestly, enjoy mountain biking immensely, even downhill singletrack, I often wonder what my problem is. And then, eventually, I mess up even when I am well within my comfort zone, and I tumble over my bike and bash myself on things, and I lay in the dirt with all the rage of a hundred bully punches coursing through my veins, and then I realize, I remember — I hate crashing.

Even when I am not really all that hurt, as I usually am not. But yesterday, while riding with Dave Nice, Dave C., and my co-worker Casey, I was blissfully pedaling down a fairly mellow, off-camber trail along a side slope when my right pedal bashed flat smack into a boulder. The exact mechanics of the crash elude me, but my left pedal somehow took a big bite out of my shin before I tumbled sideways a few feet down the slope. (And while I do deserve criticism for continually using platform pedals whilst trying to develop my technical skills, I really do believe that if I had been riding clipless and hit the boulder with the same force, instead of bashing my shin on the pedal and tipping over into the brush, I would have taken a full header over the rocks.)

Either way, I was not badly injured, or even too hurt to jump right back on the bike and continue riding; but I was bleeding, and my shin ached with a deep-set bruise from bashing against a large metal object at high speed. It hurt with every single pedal stroke, and with every hurt, the doubt bit in. "You're terrible at this. Why do you bother? Mountain biking sucks. You really should take up trail running." That inner grumbling seems to color the entire rest of the ride, until even if the rest of it is perfectly fun, on a beautiful evening, with great riding partners, I can't quite pedal away the grump.

As we pedaled home last night, I admitted to Dave Nice what a big baby I really was. "I feel like one of those little kids whose friend just pulled her hair, so she gathers up all of her toys and storms home."

"Crashing is just part of riding," Dave said nonchalantly.

"I know," I sighed. "I know."

The question is, how do I embrace it?