Flighty females

I don't often think about being a girl. Not in the sense of 'oh, I'm in the minority here'.

Or at least I didn't. Three things set me apart from the majority of the other bikers sat outside trail centre cafes or sitting at the top of the next section of route catching their breathe. One, I am fat. Two, I am not wearing the same thing that everyone is wearing because I cannot find a damn thing which fits. I've tried, I can't. Default is 3/4 combats and a wicking top and that's the way it will be for a while. Everyone else, and I mean everyone else is in mountain bike baggies and mountain bike specific jerseys. I am a little self conscious of this. But not as badly as I slowly became of being female.

If you're reading this is Scotland, you may wonder what the hell I am talking about. You would be quite right to. Until I rode at Glentress, I was so used to being the sole girl out on the trails that when I finally did ride there, it was a shock. A really big one. I knew two girly bikers had started Glentress, in fact I'd read their skills book and learnt very many things from it, but it never crossed my mind that the ratio of girls to boys would be so massively different. Or, indeed, that the size of people fighting their way up the horrible hill to Buzzards Nest might be so different to what I'd previously experienced, but different it was. It made something better that I didn't know wasn't.

So far, I've been to Gisburn, Coed Llandegla, Whinlatter, Delamere and Glentress. Girls seen art Gisburn until the new trail developments recently? 2. Once of them saw me fall off at my first attempt at singletrack, it wasn't my finest hour. Girls at Coed Llandegla the first time we went? Zero bar me and the other girl I was with. Girls at Whinlatter? 2. Delamere? 2. Maybe 3. None on the downhill section in the bike park area.
It is so much of a rarity at some trail centres to see another girl mountain biking (sorry, but pootling along on a rigid on the green doesn't count in this, mud, adrenaline and a bit of fearlessness has to be present) that on meeting each other in passing, we smile, grin, nod, laugh.....connect. Somehow, it doesn't matter how out of breath you are, how much you are dying, how much you want to give up and go home, you see another woman and you damn well acknowledge because right there in front of you is confirmation that you are not a complete and utter freak for at the least not minding the mud and dust and at the most actually really quite relishing being allowed to play in mud with impunity.

This is not, absolutely not, about sexism. It's nothing to do with it. It's about the creeping awareness, the more rides you go on, that perhaps the hobby which you have been suddenly gripped with an obsession with is not something other women are naturally drawn to. That boys are whizzing past me, some acknowledging, some laughing, some ignoring, but there are no women. That you're beating boys to the bottom of the hill and enjoying the post match analysis very much, thank you, but having a girlfriend to laugh at the ludicrousness of mud as a literal face pack might be quite nice. That somehow, you feel that there is something wrong with you for wanting to beat the boys to the bottom of the hill because that's not how proper ladies are supposed to behave and what on earth is it in you which makes you want to go faster anyway? Why can't you just be happy with knitting or cross stitching, where does the need come from to push your body and mind to their absolute limits?

Being a geek girl is a minority sport. Or at last it was, I don't think that's the reality so much any more. I am used to being in the minority. What I am not used to is the stark emptiness, the complete lack of other females presence.

Having said all that, on visiting Glentress, things changed. I noticed it in the car park and the hire shop - there were girls, and they were hiring hardtails. The further we got from the car park, the more I noticed it, girls on courses being led up the hill, girls in all girl groups possibly on hen 'nights', girls in mixed groups out with their mates, girls in couples out sharing the glee with their other halves. Suddenly, finally, with so much relief, I discovered where all the other girls were hiding. They are many, they are good, they ride with style and elegance and aggression, they ride with grins and glee emnanting from them, they ride just like the boys do.

They also call out encouragement to fat girly bikers dying on hills in a way that the boys do not. They laugh and joke about the cake at the end, they smile and understand in a way that perhaps the boys do not.

Ultimately, gender doesn't matter on a hill. Mud covers us all in the same way. Our styles may be slightly different, our frame geometry might differ, our sit bones might be slightly wider apart, our facial expressions might be more open and expressive but at the bottom, we all feel the same.

The list above? It could be written by a boy, even though the terms might change. I ride like a girl, but on a very fundamental level, I just ride.