An Exercise in Branding: Hard Girl Spring

Early this year I registered for two races, the Whistler Back 40 endurance race and the Sturdy Dirty all-women’s enduro. As I've mentioned previously, in my old age I’ve decided it’s okay to care about races, finally overcoming the feigned apathy all the local dudebros cultivated when I was racing in college and after graduation. I also now have riding friends who don’t judge me for my try-hardness. In fact, they celebrate it, which goes a long way toward me accepting and overcoming my bullshit.

 
And I cared a lot about these two, especially Back 40, a race that all the local speedy boys raved about, in a format I really like (timed stages with untimed transfers), on fun hard trails.

Even though I did really care about these races, I had the somewhat freeing knowledge that I had no hope of doing well at either of them. For Back 40, I didn’t know the trails well enough (and actual pro Whistler girls show up sometimes) and for Sturdy Dirty, I also didn’t know the trails and I simply am not fast enough downhill to be competitive.

But I did want to give it my best. I dubbed my "training regimen" Hard Girl Spring, an effective branding exercise that I let my friends interpret as they wished — half decided it was about fitness, and I used that to goad them into longer rides, and half decided it was about riding hard features, and they used that to goad me into hitting scary things I wouldn’t have dreamed of prior to this year.

El Diablo was the capstone of my "ride hard things" project

The strategy was effective. I didn’t really do enough high intensity riding to be at the pointy end of the Back 40, although coaching with the new kids XC team definitely helped, but I was fit enough, and I unlocked a new level of bravery, which somewhat improved my race descending.

Back 40 was during my dear friend Ursula’s bachelorette weekend, which conveniently was in Whistler, and she graciously gave me the okay to disappear for half a day to race.

A most excellent bachelorette crew

On the first stage I felt relaxed and strong as I picked off rider after rider on the steep climbs, and then mostly didn’t get caught on the descents even though I was really worried about that. The downhills were fun and technical and at the edge of my comfort level on my little bike at race speed.

After the day heated up and fatigue set in, I dragged my sorry ass up the last and by far hardest uphill of the day. I barely survived the final descent, my upper body crying from 5K of intense climbing. But I finished without crashing a single time, and pedaled slowly back to our vacation rental in the village and tried to recover so I could switch into party/drink/club/dance mode.

I truly loved racing XC in Whistler

Then I discovered I had placed fifth! The field was small, around 20 women total, and I was definitely toward the back of the serious racers, but I was still pleasantly surprised. I don’t usually like repeating races but I’m so excited to drag all my friends up there to do the Back 40 next year (after properly whipping them into shape).

For the Sturdy, I prerode the trails twice and felt excitement and trepidation. I registered for expert because that’s obviously where I belong in an enduro but then the courses were announced and the pro category had a longer course than the experts. And only the pros got to race all of Predator, the much ballyhooed double black trail at Tiger Mountain that I happened to really enjoy.

So I upgraded categories, as did several of my friends. I wanted to do the longest ride, and I wanted to relieve some of the internal pressure I was already feeling. I expected myself to podium in expert, and I knew if I didn’t I would be shatteringly disappointed, and if I did I would immediately discount it because “it’s not a real category.” Yes, being in my brain is terrible when it comes to racing. This is why I stopped pursuing it seriously. Holding myself to an unreasonably high standard would be fine except that I STILL refuse to adequately prepare or train to my fullest ability. So I just need to chill.

This isn't even all of us. Amazing day

We rolled down to the race with a huge crew of Bellingham women, which made the already festive event even more fun. I told everyone my goal for the day was to finish first, which is obviously stupid in an enduro when the uphills aren’t timed, but I just don’t like prolonging the nerves before each downhill.

I finished the first three stages totally clean, relaxed, happy, having so much fun, so far ahead of the rest of the pack, and feeling like I was almost kinda racing downhill well for the first time. It all came a bit unglued on Predator, where I had some very ugly bobbles and a silly crash, but at the finish I was elated to have a goodish race.

I am faster than I used to be but still haven't unlocked downhill race mode

I ended up being total pack fodder, sandwiched by all my friends very near the bottom of the results list. And based on comparable times, I wouldn’t even have podiumed in expert, the horror. But, I reasoned, I have raced the pro/open/A category at many races and been so sad about how tiny the field was, sometimes not even big enough to fill out a podium. At Sturdy, the pro field was huge, from actual world class mountain bikers to tentative, uphill-loving me.

Also it was just a damn good time with my friends. Hard Girl Spring was an absolute success.

Our House

So we loved it here, of course, how could you not once spring hits, every day sun-warmed and be-blossomed and life-affirming after the Big Dark, the smells and sparks of new growth and lengthening dusk so intoxicating. So yes, this is home. But Cy wanted a Home, capital H. 

He made persuasive arguments even though I had been eyeing the balance sheet and was not compelled by emotion because of the pure calculation: we could live forever on the fat largesse of selling our house in Idaho, or we could spend that excess down to buy a house, but what happened if our landing strip ran out, what about a serious injury or job loss or cancer or other emergency? There are things in life that eat up hundreds of thousands in one fell swoop. 

But then, you know, the AI bubble loomed, and then “we” went to war, and fungible assets felt a bit unsteadier, a bit less of a security blanket, a bit less compelling compared to that biggest and least fungible security blanket, a house, in a place we loved with all of our hearts. 

And why be a dragon, covetously hoarding gold for no purpose, when we can still very comfortably exist with the pile of gold somewhat depleted? 

He did the shopping and I held it at arm’s length because I have a bad habit of getting VERY invested, and I’ve grown too accustomed to getting what I want — my husband, my last house, my job, our last rental — so I don’t do well with disappointment. But then this big nice 20-year-old house with a dog-friendly yard on a dead end street next to an arterial pathway popped up and we put in an offer the day it posted.

Despite the loan officer finagling that made us doubt our life choices (“We don’t care what you have in the bank, why do you earn so little as a couple?!”), we were nimble and liquid and decisive and good at e-signing and collecting tax documents and answering emails.

Obligatory closing day photo

After closing, we got the keys a bit before noon and were moved in by the end of the day. A friend offered a hand and I told her we were already finished, explained that when Cy and I are both turned up to 11 we’re a formidable team, strike mission speed with no amphetamines required. We both hate the in-between, the butt scratching, the disrupted and disorderly life, so why not sprint for a day or two rather than turning unpleasantness into an ultramarathon. 

And then we were in the new house and I had my reservations, because we had been in the rental for three years and it had broad kitchen counters with capacious cabinets and was a little closer to our favorite swimming hole and I had to game out my new bike routes to work and shop and trails — and as I learned, and Cy greeted with zero surprise, apparently I am not great at coping with change — but here we are two weeks later and the yard is ripe green and the bedroom is cool and quiet and the neighbors poke their heads over the fence to say hi and Cy has a workspace in the garage for the first time and my pedal to work is shorter and everything is good. 

Really good.

Some Things I Thought About in 2025

Music in All Its Glory

I read Mood Machine, the book about Spotify, and it really reinforced how I’ve been trying to be more intentional about listening to music the past few years – only taking recommendations from humans and listening to new releases as whole albums rather than surrendering to algorithmic playlists that are undermined by the platform’s desire to underplay, and thereby underpay, real artists, and replace them with vibe-based facsimiles. 

Also NPR Music tickled my nostalgia so hard by doing a 25-year retrospective on the hosts' favorite or most zeitgeisty songs of each year – exactly the same amount of time that I’ve been a conscious consumer of music. I knew, and loved, most of the songs they shared from the opening notes. I like that I keep abreast of music. As with so many things, I am a creature shaped by my father and he is very dismissive of people who let their taste in music calcify. 

One album I was really excited about this year was LUX by Rosalía. All the critics drew the inevitable Björk comparisons but honestly I’m not familiar enough with her work besides Post for that comparison to resonate with me even though intellectually it feels apt. Rosalía more so reminds me of Beyonce in that she seems like an utter perfectionist, with a firm and exacting grip on her creative vision. She injects meaning and intention into every single reference, sample, word, and inhalation. Big Virgo energy, really – I never believe in astrology except when it makes sense to me, a Virgo, who is also a control freak. 

New Athleticism 

Being a control freak has been a disadvantage in mountain biking. I’ve had to be open to letting go and being willing to fail or be buckwild or go fast just briefly, as an essential step in losing some of my fearfulness when I’m on scary trails.

Always trying to be braver

Then on the other hand, in cyclocross, even though I didn’t have a great year results-wise, it was my best year yet in terms of maturity and effort – I had several races where I was forced to try as hard as I could, with a grit and good attitude I never used to possess. I hope to keep getting better at both aspects of cycling, being brave and trying hard, in 2026. 

Abundance and the Weaponization of Liberalism

I can’t resist the *discourse* around Abundance, every liberal’s favorite or most-despised book of 2025. The discourse is more fun than the book itself, which is quite adequate. Having covered local government as a reporter for almost ten years, first in Idaho and now in Washington, it’s been interesting to see the realities of government impediments in a blue state – Washington is famously second only to California in terms of being hard to build in. 

I’ve actually heard conservative Washington elected officials say with longing that in Idaho, planners will approve a development proposal scrawled on a napkin. I’d love for the conservative county commissioners of my former Idaho home to hear that – they’ve used the exact same phrase to bemoan their own perceived government overreach and extol the lax planning policies of even more rural communities. Perhaps these napkin submittals are apocryphal. 

Napkins aside, I’ve already seen much more weaponized public process in my short time in Washington. Homeowners here couch their NIMBYism in much more culturally accepted jargon about the environment and vulnerable communities rather than only using the NIMBY 101 tropes of traffic and noise. As someone who pretty much just thinks building more housing is a good thing, it’s hard to suppress my raised eyebrows when I hear these anti-growth dog whistles. 

Still Hating Generative A.I. 

I can’t stop reading think pieces about all the ways it’s bad and destructive and deeply lame and how it’s infantalizing our population. (Here are two of my favorite grumpy reads on the topic: Why Does A.I. Write Like … That? and The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing A.I.)  

I’m afraid my complete intransigence about it might mark me as intellectually incurious – I’ve never tried using one of the LLM tools or generated a single image or video because it would make me feel unclean, and I scroll past Google’s stupid A.I. search synopses as quickly as possible. But I don't think A.I. offers anything novel. It’s just the residue of human knowledge scraped off the internet and repackaged in the most basic way possible.

I’m not sure feeling so much antipathy toward A.I. is productive and it makes me unpleasantly dogmatic in casual conversation but my god I hate it. 

Eudaimonia

I discovered this word and held it in my cupped hands like some kind of gorgeous moth. I feel intellectually and emotionally stimulated at all times. I have a deeply fulfilling job and financial stability. I have lots of great friends to do fun things with and an amazing backyard in which to do those things. I am blessed with a relationship that’s better than any fantasy, that never feels like work, with a partner who is 100% on my team and who constantly amazes me with his empathy and creativity and humor and awesomeness. It feels contradictory to the heinous reality of everything that’s happening right now, but in most ways my life couldn’t be better.

My loves