Battle of the Bear: My First Mountain Bike Race

I had given up on the idea of racing a mountain bike after choosing the Guanella Pass Hill Climb over the Beti Bike Bash. The Beti Bike Bash has a race category specific to women who have never raced before. I was all about that because mountain biking intimidated the shit out me. To factor racing in totally freaked me out.

I thought that if I could take on a race with other first-timers, it wouldn’t be as humiliating as opposed to racing another course with experienced athletes. At least if I was going to suck, I’d have the camaraderie with other noobs.

When I saw one of my teammates, Teena, offering her registration to Battle of the Bear, it was hard to pass up. Especially when my husband was also planning to race it. I was originally planning on racing the Senior State Time Trial Championship which was the same day as the Battle of the Bear, so it came down to racing a 40K Time Trial to prove I was better than last year (DFL last year) or racing 16 miles on a mountain bike having absolutely no clue as to how that race would turn out. I opted to throw myself out of my comfort zone (and hopefully not off my bike) in a big way and race my first-ever mountain bike course.

I asked and verified with my teammates the technical difficulty on the course as I’ve never ridden the mountain bike trails in Breckenridge…