THE FIRST RIDE IN A NEW DISCIPLINE THAT MAKES YOU HUMBLE AS HELL Mara Abbott

AFTER WINNING THE biggest stage race on the women’s World Tour, the Giro Rosa, in 2013, I needed an adventure. When my older brother invited me to join his crew for the Steamboat Stinger, an 80km mountainbike race through the peaks of Colorado, I was game. The long-climb-up, easy-singletrack-down course sounded perfect for a rider with my cardiovascular engine. I hadn’t mountain biked since high school, but somehow that didn’t strike me as a problem. I rolled my 2003 lavender Cannondale to the start, ready to show off. I reached the first summit in a respectable position. But roughly five seconds into the first descent, I discovered there’s no such thing as ‘easy singletrack’ when you don’t actually mountain bike. And so, sandwiched between a drop-off and a cliff face, with nowhere to pull over, despite my panicked need to do so, would-be passers accumulated, each painfully polite, saying, “Right behind you.” I knew I wasn’t a terribly skilled mountain biker, but I was at the pinnacle of road cycling fitness. If I was still this terrible with all of that advantage, what did that make me? The worst mountain biker in the universe, clearly. I did finish, though I refused to pass a single rider on any climb, knowing I would just delay them on the way down. It’s been five years, and I cannot live with this failure in the dirt defining me. There’s a redemption ride coming – very, very far in the future. –