Age is Just a Number
Mountain biker Mel Blomfield’s love of adventure
MELANIE BLOMFIELD HAS JUST ARRIVED FROM her job as a physics and chemistry teacher at Linwood High School, not by car like the other mums, but on her commuter bike, an ageing silver road bike that has seen Mel clock up masses of miles over the years. However, it’s not on the road that Mel’s passion and flair shines through but in the hills above us, on the mountain bike tracks where youthful daredevils whoop and holler as they loop and leap their way down the labyrinth of paths dedicated to mountain biking thrill seekers.
Little do they know that sitting in the café below them is a woman who can out-bike most of them!
Born in Canada to New Zealand parents, it seems Mel was always destined for adventure. Her parents were working the ski season as part of their round-the-world Land Rover trip, when the arrival of Mel ‘ruined my mother’s second ski season’. While pregnancy and a newborn restricted her mother’s skiing that year, the mountains and the snow were to become a lifelong passion of Mel’s. These days she laughs that her father ‘forced us to climb hills and go tramping but I appreciate it in retrospect. It was such a good start to our lives.’
Mel played ‘all the normal sports’ as a child, but it was the fringe sports that captured her attention. She was obsessed with ultimate Frisbee and passionate about rock climbing. However, in 2003 she met Richard Goldsbury who invited her on a mountain bike weekend. Love blossomed, marriage followed and over the years she slowly transitioned into a mountain biker.
For many people, the achievement of riding up and down a sensibly formed track would be enough. However, Mel was drawn to the technical aspects of mountain biking, hurtling down perilously steep single tracks, over rock gardens and through pine trees, airborne much of the time as she navigated the tight twists, turns and jumps that make up this adrenalinjunkie sport.
‘I think I enjoy being slightly scared,’ she admits. ‘It makes you feel alive and you’re not bored. I don’t take enormous risk but I love the feeling when you do. It’s that little thing that keeps you coming back for more.’ Mel bursts into laughter, admitting that in her early mountain biking days she had been known to ‘carry my bike up a mountain and carry it down again!’
Mel began mountain bike racing prior to the arrival of her twins, Winnie and Boyd (13), achieving third place in a crosscountry race. Humble about the result, she admits ‘that’s quite encouraging getting on the podium in your first race’.
Since then, Mel has been flouting convention and beating other women over half her age. In the 2020 New Zealand Open Downhill race she placed second, ahead of the 20-something-year-old who came in third. In 2018 and 2019 Mel was first at the Linger and Die Enduro in Alexandra, one of New Zealand’s bigger races. Three years ago she won the NZ Enduro race and she has twice placed third at Dunedin’s Three Peaks Mountain Race. However, it’s the Rotorua Enduro World Series that makes the effervescent Mel bubble most. Racing in the Over-35 category, the amateur mum beat sponsored riders, placing first in 2015 and 2017 and third in 2019.
While racing has become a significant part of Mel’s life, it’s not the driver behind her love for mountain biking. Instead, she says, ‘I ride to have fun, mostly. I want to be fit so you can have more fun.’ This is a position supported by her husband, Richie, who Mel says ‘rides like a dream’. However, he’s also ‘the least competitive person in the universe’. Instead, Richie is unpredictable on his bike and in life, choosing to ride the fun line, not the fast line and happier photographing a ride than racing it. An engineer by day, Richie morphs into a creator and tinkerer afterhours, whether it’s photography, track building or even inventing and developing a carbon fibre long travel mountain bike. With a love for maps and places, Mel says Richie is prepared to ‘get up early, stay out late and go somewhere weird’ to capture the perfect image.
Home away from home for this adventurous Christchurch-based couple is the Craigieburn Range where they ski Craigieburn every winter and mountain bike when there’s no snow … or even combine mountain biking and skiing when the opportunity arises! Their children, Winnie and Boyd, have been swept along with their parents’ irresistible enthusiasm for adventure and life too, both keen mountain bikers but most passionate about skiing. However, Boyd has gifted another quieter layer to the adventurous lifestyle the family enjoys – birdlife. Fanatical about native birds from an early age, the family has embraced his interest and become keen conservationists. Browsing Richie’s Instagram page is thought-provoking. It’s loaded with the expected mountain bike and ski photos, but it’s also peppered with images of birds, an informal pictorial document that tells the real story about the state of their habitat and our mountains and native bush.
While Mel and Richie have embraced a lifestyle full of fun, it’s not one without risk, something Mel will attest to. Eyes twinkling, she recalls the time she punctured a lung. ‘I was chatting when I should’ve been paying attention on a steep technical section.’ Sickeningly, Mel went over her handlebars, landed on her back, broke her ribs and punctured a lung. However, the worst part for Mel was the drug-induced dreams. ‘Apparently people still do this drug for thrills!’ she exclaims in disbelief.
Functioning on a mere six hours of sleep each night, Mel is packing everything she possibly can into life, combining her professional role as a teacher with the thrills and spills of a sport normally associated with younger riders. However, the odds of Mel slowing down to lead a more conventional lifestyle are slim. In fact, she’s proof age is just a number – it’s attitude and positivity that will keep this plucky mum of the mountain bike tracks fast and flying high.
Mel is packing everything she possibly can into life, combining her professional role as a teacher with the thrills and spills of a sport normally associated with younger riders.