Back in early June I attended the El Dorado Benduro outside of Georgetown, CA, right in the backyard of my good friend Lindsay Currier and put on by her and her dude Josh Bender (the Bender Sender, pioneer of early freeride mountain biking). A great location, free camping, rocky and steep motorcycle trails far out in the woods, live music, and tons of free beer made this race a complete adventure. My legs especially weren't too sure about two 17 mile days in a row, each with 2,500 feet of climbing, this early in the season. Although we had an epic winter and I ski toured nearly every day, mountain biking is a completely different animal and it takes a little while to adjust to using different muscles, not to mention the whole avoiding wrecking while flying down loose, sketchy trails.
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| Stage 3 on day2 of the El Dorado Benduro. Photo: Pat Branch/PBmedia |
Fast forward three months to mid-August was the Sturdy Dirty, an all-women's race series that I thought sounded like a blast, the second event of which was held up in the green jungle of Oakridge, Oregon. Oakridge had been on the list to check out for a while now, and I was also bound to run into an old friend who had moved up to Oregon right around when I disappeared from mountain bike racing. I had put in a lot of miles, tons of climbing, and a good amount of time on the single speed while my Ibis Ripley was having a shock rebuild and was feeling fairly fit. I put myself in the Pro class, just hoping that I would be somewhere other than dead last among the 20 other names on that list, most of whom I recognized as veteran enduro racers. Driving solo and leaving on Thursday after work left me with only Friday afternoon to catch the last practice shuttle and see some of the race course. I ended up opting not to scout the first two stages which were supposedly the least technical; having no idea how long it would take, I really didn't want to get caught in the dark only partway down.
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| Somewhere in the middle of the Sturdy Dirty. Photo: Patrick M/PSPLLC |
Race number 3 that I signed up for this year was the Mammoth Kamikaze Games enduro. Having signed up for this race the previous two years in a row and been unable to race for one reason or another, I have felt at odds with the universe just trying to make it happen... even ONCE!! At this point I sort of didn't even care what happened during the race, I just wanted to get to the Mammoth parking lot, put a number plate on my bike, and roll off from the starting line. Well, I got closer than ever this year, but still no race.
I actually made it down to Mammoth this time, but a lot later than I planned. Ideally I'd have taken most of the week off to have plenty of time to adapt to the dirt and learn the course, but had too much to get done at work that week and of course needed the money. After a late arrival on Friday night, and second thoughts about my little Ripley and the gnarly pro-line trails, I had the brilliant idea to ask the friend about using his spare bike for the race, a much longer travel machine that might be more appropriate for the gnarly course and mostly lift-assisted transfers. Never mind that it was an X-large and the fork also really needed a rebuild as I later discovered.
I grabbed the bike first thing in the morning for 7:30 AM practice, put the number on it, and went up the lift to take a lap on the last, and perhaps nastiest stage. I had ridden that bike once before, at night with a light, and everything felt funny then. It still felt weird, though I could tell it was slacker and I could roll down steep things a little less terrified. All of that was beside the point after I had a slo-mo-wreck where my foot jammed directly between two spokes and broke the valve stem completely off. Walking down the lower 1/3 of the trail was not on my list of things to do that morning, nor was changing out a flat tubeless tire, especially with a limited time to practice trails before the Sport/Beginner class race started. I ran back to grab the Ripley and rode up to see as many more stages as I could fit in. I had to run back into registration to get the proper sticker on my number before they would let me on the lift again, so while I was having a nervous breakdown and feeling hopelessly inadequate, I asked them to move me out of the Pro class and into Expert. I didn't think I could even podium in Expert at this point, and I would feel much better about not having any of the really fast pro girls get caught behind me waiting for me to get the heck out of the way. The reality is, I'm learning I am not nearly as fast as I was 4 years ago, and not taking the same kind of risks, so there's no point in ruining someone else's race because I faceplanted right in front of them.
Having already seen most of Bullet and knowing I'd likely be walking a few sections anyhow, I continued on to see the next most technical stage. It was just one short steep section with awkward rocks, but here I decided again that I'd rather walk than wreck trying to send the gnar on a wholly unsuitable bike. While walking down to look at lines and watch some other riders hit the section I made friends with some rad folks from Redding that I stuck with for the rest of the morning. We even managed a run all the way from the top of the mountain down Stage 4. Good times! And at the bottom of this, I then realized looking at the dust on the shaft that my rear shock had way too much air in it. Hadn't bothered to mess with it since having a second rebuild done after Sturdy Dirty... oops again. Amateur hour bike racing here. Should maybe have put myself in the Sport class at this point!
Back at the camper Kit was getting ready to go out for some riding, so I grabbed my DH bike to join him, figuring my Ripley was better off not getting beat up before the race. Even on the big bike I cursed and struggled through the rocky sections like a complete newbie, failing to comprehend how I'd fairly easily followed a friend through most of these back in 2009 on my old clunker DH bike. Knowing the right lines does help... I haven't spent much time on the DH bike this year and it was pretty obvious because I didn't trust it to do what it can do to eat up those rock gardens. And wow, that's really bad for one's self confidence before a race! After a handful of laps on Velocity I finally got the right line through one rock garden and felt a little bit better about riding bikes, starting to de-stress and have fun again. We got on a fun jump trail to go back over to the other base to eat some food and catch the last of the downhill race, but I hadn't hit more than a handful when one takeoff caused a weird, disturbing sensation in my neck, very hard to describe but the end result was that it felt like I had hit the ground very hard and it started to spasm and seize up. This freaked me out and I rode slowly the rest of the way down to the bottom.
Even though I hadn't actually crashed it worried me enough that I decided to bail on the race. Normal necks don't get whiplash like that, I'm definitely sure of it. That was such a disappointment--even with all the emotional drama I put myself through, I ended up being pretty pumped to get out and race no matter what class or bike I was on. My neck had been feeling rather strange for a couple of months prior to this but I had just kept on going, had a little bit of bodywork and saw my physical therapist, and mainly was told to do some stretches and take more frequent breaks at work. Now I've been to the doctor and had some imaging done (all normal, thankfully, aside from a loss of cervical curve) and am back doing therapy, trying to unravel the latest piece of the puzzle that my neck has become over the last several years.
I was going to wait until after the Zion Benduro in November to finish this post, since it is kind of a race report/season summary, but it's not looking like I will make it to the race. Almost 2 months past the Mammoth race and my neck is still not feeling completely normal, but I think I may now be closer to solving the puzzle and having a relatively more normally behaving neck than I've had since the fall of 2013 when I originally wrecked it. Since then, I have basically had to deal with some degree of a whiplash injury nearly every time I hit the ground at any speed, even relatively slowly, and that makes many activities far more stressful all the way down to cross country skiing or walking around in the dark. A combination of factors seems to have contributed: the headplant incident itself, which led to chronic poor posture and weak supporting muscles, and then add in my current employment as a commercial seamstress spending a fair amount of time sitting at a sewing machine or leaning over a table to mark, measure, and cut large quantities of fabric. While I have made a habit of taking frequent breaks to stretch and move around at work if I'm doing a heavy sewing day, my physical therapist and chiropractor both agree that it is not an ideal job for somebody with my history of neck injury because it encourages it back into the wrong position. I have enjoyed working there and have learned so much, but I'm exploring my other options right now, more on that later perhaps...
Although I haven't been able to comfortably ride since mid-September, progress is being made with restoring the cervical curve and strengthening the stabilizers, thanks especially to an excellent sports chiropractor who was highly recommended to me. I don't particularly enjoy having things go crack, but nothing else I've tried up until now has managed to resolve the root of this issue. So far it has been well worth it since he describes in detail the mechanics of what is going on, feels for movement of joints and for muscle tone, and also gives me many exercises to do which seem to be working well. However, some days my neck just feels confused and sore from all of the changes and wanting to go back to where it has been for the past few years. This generally gives me a headache, a grumpy attitude, and a bad outlook on life as relating to riding bicycles again, but I have to remind myself that the quick fixes which in the past have made the pain go away sooner also didn't seem to do much for the underlying problem.
The PT and chiro both have told me I am on the right track and that I should avoid babying it too much, telling me to try some easy riding again, which I have yet to try with the shortening daylight hours and much to be done around the house before winter. I made a point of finding a convenient yoga studio and trying out a variety of classes, initially only the restorative ones but I've been adding in some more active alignment-focused classes and a faster moving vinyasa class as well with good results. If I need more time off the bike to let my body adapt to the changes, I think I can hang in there with the additional challenge of getting back into yoga with far less flexibility than I had when I was previously practicing and going to classes regularly some years ago.
