Dirt angels
The women from all walks of life, joined by a common love of an emerging female sport
Why are more women getting into mountain biking? It can be fast, challenging, skilful and dirty. It can also be relaxed and social. But above all, mountain biking is just plain fun.
Regardless of age, size and fitness, if you can ride a bike, you can join the growing number of women who are finding their fun while making friends and getting super fit on Toowoomba’s world class mountain bike trails.
Just ask Jeana Bierton, Kate Craft and Juliet Redding, all local professional women aged 30-plus who have a new lease on life through mountain biking.
“I’m not a tomboy at all,” says Juliet, who works as a financial advisor.
“I wear suits, heels and make-up every day, but I love the challenge of mountain biking and the fact that you have to be absolutely mindful the whole time.”
Toowoomba GP Kate Craft has been riding with her family for two years now.
“I can say we are a mountain biking family,” she says. “I still struggle with steep cornering and haven’t learnt to ‘manual’ and am only getting faster riding up rather than downhill, but I’m out there.
“We regularly participate in cross country events and our girls have just been to the National Enduro Championships in Adelaide where Laura (aged 13) came second in the under 15 female category.”
According to Jeana Bierton who is a paramedic with Queensland Ambulance Service, mountain biking is so much fun she forgets it’s part of her fitness plan.
My idea of absolute exhilaration: being on a bike, hurtling down a single bush track in the dark early morning of mid-winter. — Kate Craft
“You can take the sport to whatever level you want from cross country to downhill and you can do it all here in Toowoomba,” she says. “We have some of the best trails in south-east Queensland. “The fire trails are great for absolute beginners advancing all the way to the black diamond Mckenzie Frenzy downhill track.”
Developed and maintained by the Toowoomba Mountain Bike Club with assistance from Toowoomba Regional Council, the 23kms of tracks throughout Jubilee Park have become a playground for locals and visitors as well as a skill centre for world champions.
If you’d like to know more about Dirt Angels or the Toowoomba Mountain Bike Club, contact Jeana Bierton at dirtangelsmtb@gmail.com