That first *unexpected* race - and how it healed me
I didn’t race. I only biked. I never dreamed of racing. Until the phone rang.
“I can’t race tomorrow, do you want my entry?” It was a friend, a brand-new friend. And she did not seem the racing type.
“You are registered to race?” I asked. She knew what I meant.
“Oh sure, just for fun.”
I was taken aback. DID people race just for fun? Weren’t there spectators? Months of training? Tear-stained losses?
“Just do it,” she said. “Pick up my registration tomorrow, and no one will care. It’s not like you’re going to win!”
She had a point.
I’ll do it, I thought. I was currently embarking on a year of firsts. Biking had become my salvation in the days, months, this summer, after losing my mother.
I did all the things I thought I should do before the race, except actually train. I ate a spaghetti dinner (carbs!), I mixed a water bottle with energy powder (turbo!), I panicked the morning of (porta potty!).
It was November in Michigan. I was going to race the 8-mile Slush Cup, a mountain bike race held as a part of the Iceman Cometh Challenge. Would there be snow on the ground? That was part of the “fun.”
I wore toe warmers in my bike shoes and traded my fingerless riding gloves in for warm winter ones. I secured a number plate to my bike with three twist-ties and a prayer. I stood in the starting chute and shook with nerves on a 30-degree gray day.
The start gun sounded through the woods, and I went.
In the first 10 seconds, someone clipped my wheel from behind. What???? I didn’t know that was allowed. But I didn’t fall! But I didn’t breathe either. And I was pumping enough adrenaline to make my body throb.
Whose idea was this? I kept asking myself, wishing I was home on the couch in my former Saturday morning life.
Then.
I started passing people. It was inconceivable. I was actually faster than some riders, counting a few small children on bikes, but still. It was exhilarating.
My bike had become my solution. My days were no longer filled with hospital visits or chemo or doctors. I was no longer at my mother’s house making her lunch while my two sons sat, quieted, in the living room. Those days were over. In their place, in the last several months, had come my bike.
I wasn’t the type of person to go biking at dawn or racing on a Saturday. But I was now. And maybe that’s exactly why I did - I wasn’t me anymore. I suddenly had to do things that I’d never done before. Lots of them. All without my mother.
And every mile I rode turned up something new - or wore down something old. I never would have guessed that a bike could do so much. It wasn’t about the race that day; it was about everything else.
The spark
I started to look around. There was a dad helping his son walk his bike up a hill. There were two teenage boys who flew past me. And up ahead, I found out that all eight of the miles were hilly.
But then, I saw a woman about my age. I thought... I should try to catch her. The thought surprised me. Suddenly I wasn’t just riding, I was racing. (who am I??)
I put a little gas into my pedals, and in just a few moments, I caught her (but how?!).
“Have a good ride,” I said as I passed her, not sure if she would answer, or if we were supposed to be chatting at all during a race.
But she replied, "You too!" with a wave.
I thought... That was kinda fun.
Then I saw another woman. And I worked over the next few minutes to reel her in, too, with a “Hello!” and she replied with a cheer.
Next, though, a woman overtook me from behind, with a friendly wave of her own. I wasn’t so friendly in that moment, although I did manage to wave back (where was this coming from!).
Because I found that the moment she was past me, I wanted to DOWN her.
A spark, a fire, that I hadn’t felt in so long, came alive again.
I took off! I worked to stay on her wheel. I didn’t know what that term meant then, but that was what I did. I kept pace with her, following her line through the woods, my front wheel as close to her back one as I dared.
Sometimes she would be ahead of me, then fall off, and I would get around her and she’d ride me for a while. We went back and forth like that for miles. We were pushing each other.
I was going fast, faster than I’d ever gone alone. My bike was teaching me another lesson.
Finally, when she slowed on a hill, I found that I could keep going, wanted to keep going. So I did, moving forward alone even when I wondered if I could.
Another lesson.
“Go get em!” she shouted.
“That was fun!” I shouted back. We were both smiling.
As I took off, I realized the power, both mentally and physically, that I’d built up over the summer. Grief, it turned out, had its perks.
I was alone on the trail the rest of the way, my lungs exploding, my legs fried. But before long, the finish line announced itself: the sound of cowbells, the smell of bonfires, and the orange fence narrowing riders over the finish line appeared.
I heard the crowd begin to roar all around me and then, the announcer cut through the chaos.
“And… here comes our first woman finisher!” boomed over the loudspeakers.
I looked around: Where was she?
But there was no one but me. I had won the women’s race. (Could it be?!)
Then, over the shouts, he announced my name… but it wasn’t my name – it was my friend’s, the one who had given me her registration:
“Congratulations to Judy!!” the announcer boomed.
And I started laughing. It was my big moment, and it wasn’t even my name!
It was even better: Judy was my mother’s name.
As her name came over the loudspeakers down into the woods, down to that bike, down to me in my new world without her, my tears came down, too. My mother was with me after all. 🩷
I signed up for bigger and longer and harder races after that. And while I never won another race again - I will never forget that first race. When I saw how far biking had carried me. When I understood that I wouldn’t always be the same girl. When I realized that life could bring (muddy, beautiful, joyful) wins - even on the hardest trails.
P.S. Please note, this happened many years ago, and riding under someone else's plate would result in a lifetime ban now! I may or may not have been the reason they instituted this policy.