July 15, 2024

The Sturdy Dirty 2024: Riding in Community

THE RACE

This weekend, I participated in my first enduro. I’ve always told myself “I’m not a racer.” I pedal for the sake of community, not because I want to be the fastest, and prefer to session jump lines with friends, rather than floor it top to bottom down chunk alone.

But I’ve heard so many good things about the Sturdy Dirty over the years, having befriended both the organizers (the self-proclaimed “Sturdy Bitches”) and countless members of their community, that I finally caved to peer pressure and signed up for the 2024 race at Raging River State Forest—which coincidentally happened to be the event’s tenth anniversary.

And, it turns out, any secret fears I had that being in a competitive environment would take any of the joy out of my riding were unfounded, at least as long as said environment is the party-in-the-woods atmosphere of the Sturdy Dirty.

I caught up with old friends and met new ones (shout out especially to Morgan, with whom I am now BEST FRIENDS and Hay who fucking gets it when it comes to stopping for Capri Suns and pushing bikes up steep loose climbs). I discovered that I am actually quite capable of gaining 4,500’ in a single 25-mile day so long as there are pickle- and summer-camp-themed aid stations along the way, and frequent run-ins with hype-girls like my teammates Krystin Norman and Ren Egnew from Wild Rye; and freeride queen, Alex Showerman.

I also did better on the downhills than I thought I would—while simultaneously learning a lot about what it takes to hang on to my damn bike for eight minutes a stage. Biggest takeaways? My forearms are wee lil’ noodles and I could definitely add an upper body routine into my life, and pre-riding is very helpful (shocking, I know), especially pre-riding at a fast pace so you know when course splits are coming and don’t accidentally funnel down the double-black option you never rode because: “I won’t take it on race day.”

CREATING SPACE

The bike industry gets a lot of bad press, and rightly so, for having some seriously toxic traits like ego, aggression, homogeneity, privilege, discrimination, and willful naïveté (to name just a few smol ones *eyeroll emoji*). So the real reason I loved my time at the Sturdy Dirty - beyond learning how to manage hydration and nutrition on a 90 degree day, above having an excuse to wear extra glitter, and more than getting to ride new-to-me trails - was because all those things were not just absent, they were intentionally denied entrance.

Alison Mariella Désir, the author of Running While Black, recently posted a short piece about white women (it me, it the Sturdy Bitches) in the outdoor industry: “What’s frustrating is that [they] are the ones who have access to institutional power and resources. So while they continue to advocate for this narrow vision of what it means to be a woman, the rest of us are left out of the conversation and left without those same resources. This is not a personal attack. They could be wonderful women. They could be really fun and really cool. That’s immaterial. I’m talking about the way they’re not creating space for all of us.”

From my perspective, the Sturdy Bitches, through the community they have cultivated, have created space (and, in this author’s humble opinion, are also really fun and really cool). Which is a beautiful thing given how unfortunately rare it remains in mountain biking. And proof that sometimes even white women can get it right - and should always be striving to.

There is obviously always more work to do when it comes to creating an equitable future for our chosen sport of mountain biking. But I’d like to commend the Bitches on how far they’ve come at this point. I showed up to a welcoming event where I could be new at something without judgment, loud and opinionated without reprimand, and in community without fear of being othered. In a year full of industry rollbacks on the promises of 2020 and our “racial reckoning” as a country (a country with apparently a very short memory, a disingenuous way of giving apologies, not to mention seriously shallow pockets…), that space the sturdy Sturdy Dirty provided me was a breath of fresh air - and a very joyful reminder that having fun is fun and that everyone belongs on bikes.