Catch up with the Shred Girls!
Let's catch up!
Thanks for taking the time to check out Shred Girls. Here's what's been going on last month:
See you soon!
-Molly (& Lindsay, Ali and Jen)
Excerpts:
NICA’s GRiT Girls Know How to Shred! Meet Molly Weitzman
This is the second of many interviews from the Pennsylvania MTB NICA League’s amazing GRiT (Girls Riding Together) camp that they hosted this summer in PA. I was lucky enough to go and got a chance to meet so many incredible girls with fantastic advice to share (like our first girl from the camp, Madeline Clancy!). Today, meet Molly, an 11 year old on the Downington MTB Team. (Her sister Lily also races—stay tuned for her story as well!) How did you get started riding? This is my first year on the team. But my sister Lily has been on it for two years, so it feel slike I’ve been riding for two or three years—I always used to ride around watching the teams before I started racing! At first, I didn’t know about it, when Lily started. My mom suggested I try it when I got to sixth grade, but I wasn’t sure. I was trying to figure out what I was interested in, find hobbies I liked. So I tried it, and I realized wow, I really love this. And now I love mountain biking so much. What made you love it? I love all of it. Everything. Except the uphills! View this post on Instagram How far could you skid this cardboard? The @pamtbrace GRiT camp has some amazing skills tests for the girls and I LOVE this one! #moregirlsonbikes #shredgirls @nationalmtb A post shared by Shred Girls (@shred.girls) on Aug 26, 2019 at 5:26am PDT Best advice? My first time riding, my mom gave me advice about bridges. You want to look down at the start, but just for a split second to check your line. Then, you want to look straight ahead and keep going. If you look down, you’ll start wobbling and not be able to go in a straight line, but if you look where you want to go, you’ll make it across. Advice for making friends in cycling? For me, It’s always been easy. For someone new to a team who’s shy, find someone who looks like you would want to be friends with them, go up and ask how they’re doing. Just start a conversation! In NICA, everyone is great! View this post on Instagram The most hypnotic video you’ll watch all day—and a great way to practice slow speed bike skills! Grab a couple of #Shredgirls and give it a try! #moregirlsonbikes A post shared by Shred Girls (@shred.girls) on Aug 27, 2019 at 5:12am PDT Best moment at GRiT Camp? Sleeping in a hammock and riding around with new friends! Goals in cycling? This season, I have three goals. Get faster, get in two laps in a race, and to get podium or first place in a race. [Molly finished second overall in her category in the season!] Know a Shred Girl IRL? Nominate her to be featured on the site here!
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What’s Your Mantra? Real Life Shred Girls Share Their Favorites
I talk to a lot of cyclists, and all of the best ones have one thing in common: They all have a great mantra that they repeat to themselves when the going gets tough. Here are a few of my absolute favorites from Real Life Shred Girls! View this post on Instagram What’s your mantra during hard rides and races?? A post shared by Shred Girls (@shred.girls) on Oct 17, 2019 at 6:29am PDT “Happy watts!” “Happy watts!” One of my former teammates would always tell me how much faster you are when you are relaxed and having fun on a course. For someone who is known for getting very anxious and stressed before and during races, this advice was always super helpful for me. It gives me a little mantra to think about when I’m in the middle of a race or just a hard interval session, and reminds me to always just enjoy the ride. –Real Life Shred Girl: MTBer and Cyclocrosser Lily Peck ‘I can, I will, I will not be denied.’ “My coach in high school taught me a mantra: He said to ignore the negative thoughts in my head and just chant, ‘I can, I will, I will not be denied.’ All the other voices in my head were like, ‘you suck,’ ‘you’re not good,’ and my coach said if I started using this mantra it would crowd out the negative thoughts. And it did.” ‘I can, I will, I will not be denied.’ “No matter how good or bad you feel, it’s not going to last. I tell myself that in long races—even when I’m feeling good, I tell myself, keep eating, keep drinking, don’t get too excited. And if I’m in a hole, I tell myself that it’s not going to last, I can pull myself out of it. And if it’s really hard for me, it’s really hard for everyone else too.” –Why You Need to Be Kind to Yourself (in Cycling + Life) with Rebecca Rusch It won’t be easy but it will be worth it I just had to keep reminding myself that What goes up must go down. Every time I got discouraged I would say “Elissa, You are biking the Continental Divide, enjoy it, it won’t be easy but it will be worth it.” –Shred Girl Elissa Cummings Talks Bikepacking the Continental Divide, Part 2 And from other Shred Girls… lindsaydawnb: “I love hills” and “pain is temporary” 🤘🏼😊 shbcxrun: “Smiling gives me power”
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A Quick Guide to Goal-Setting: Learn the ABCs
I’ve been giving a lot of talks about the mental side of sports and one topic that we keep coming back to is around goal-setting, so I wanted to just touch on my best tip for creating a good goal to work towards. My friend, Frank L. Smoll Ph.D., explained this simple concept to me, and it’s one of my favorites. Every goal should follow the ABCs. So, for the smartest goal-setting, make sure you think about these three things when picking your next big scary goal: A goal should be… Achievable Pick a goal that has an actual end point, something measurable. For example, ‘I want to get better at bike riding’ doesn’t have one specific end point. But ‘I want to ride the double-black-diamond trail at the local bike park’ is a specific goal that you can actually achieve. A goal should be… Believable It might be a stretch goal that you’re not entirely sure you can hit, but a goal has to be something you BELIEVE you can do, even if that belief is deep-down and you’re scared that you might not make it. Something inside of you needs to be saying ‘Yes! It may be a lot of work, but I can believe this goal can be met!’ (So using our last example, ‘Yes, it’s going to be really scary but I know if I practice and learn how to hit jumps and drops, I’ll be able to do that double-black trail.’ A goal should be… Commit-able A goal is only a realistic goal if you actually can do the work required to get there. Using that double-black diamond example again, that goal is only commit-able if you know you can get to the park to practice a couple times a week, that you can rent or you own a downhill bike, that you have time to work on drops and jumps. A lot of us have big scary goals, like riding 100 miles in a day, but if we have only 2 hours a week to practice for something like that, it’s not really a goal that you can commit to, right? OK—let me know in the comments what your goals in cycling are for 2020! And we’ll talk about how to take them and turn them into an actual action plan next week!
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A Shred Girl Parent Talks About Passing The Torch + Being Outridden by Her Shred Girl!
I love Katie Macarelli for her amazing honesty. Her daughter—who’s been featured on here as a Shred Girl IRL—has been getting faster and faster over the years, and Katie is adamant about not pushing her to race unless she wants to. Which, as any racer knows, is hard to stay calm about! But lately, Isabella has been racing more and recently, she beat her mom in a race. Katie wrote about the feelings of pride as a mom, but the complicated parts of also being a bike racer, in this amazing essay. Give it a read and share it around if it resonates with you! By Katie Macarelli The first moment I saw a little plus sign on the pregnancy test was a big one. At the time, I was 25. I was thrilled. I was terrified. I was going to be a mom. There was a baby growing inside me. It all sounds very straight-forward, but I can assure you the feeling is anything but. When we discovered we were going to have a girl at our ultrasound appointment 20 weeks later, I cried. I was SURE we were going to have a boy; I wanted a boy. Hold tight. Put your pitch-forks and torches away and let me explain. I was the youngest of four kids; two older brothers and an older sister. And I took great comfort in the fact that I had older brothers while growing up. Never mind that they regularly yelled at me, ignored me, chased me through the house, folded me up in our sleeper-couch, locked me outside, pretended to be werewolves in the corn-fields, etc. It was still nice. Growing up and into my adulthood, I continued to hang out with men more than women. Why? It was just easier. More straight-forward. Girls were mean to me when I was younger. M-E-A-N. Plus, there was so much drama. So many comparisons. So much senseless competition in all the wrong places and talk about bodies and clothing and blah, blah, blah. So as soon as the ultrasound technician left the room, I burst into tears and cried into my husband’s chest, “I don’t know how to raise a gi-hir-hirrrl”. That feeling lasted approximately zero seconds after I held our first daughter in my arms. Isabella (Bella) was perfect in every way and I was lucky to have her. Real Life Shred Girl Isabella Macarelli Talks Pushing Limits on the Mountain Bike Fast forward to her first birthday. She had just taken her first steps — from the coffee table to my husband — while I had just taken another pregnancy test. Sure enough, we were pregnant again, with (as we found out a few months later) a second daughter. This time I cried tears of relief. Boys seemed ridiculously hard to me by this point. In every way. I thought of my mom who had two boys and two girls and first, I said a prayer of thanks for her patience and then I thought, “Annnnnd we’re good. We don’t need any more after this.” And that is how it went. We had two little girls, 20 months apart, and life was crazy-fun. Side note: When pregnant, you often think of all the things you’re going to do with your child: Teach them how to play ball, build Lego castles, ride a bike, go camping, etc. But upon having them, you quickly realize that that was just a silly game your brain and society played with you. The joke is on YOU! Instead, you have a boneless blob that cries a lot and makes you so sleepy you can hardly muster the energy to brush your teeth, let alone go camping. Luckily, that’s just temporary. All of the sudden these little milestones DO happen. They smile. They roll. They walk, run, dance, joke, sing, read, swim and hug you so tightly you think you’re neck will break. And it’s lovely. Some Advice for Parents of Young Shred Girls from a MTBing Mom As avid outdoorsy people (primarily cyclists), my husband and I were beyond delighted when our girls first learned to ride bikes. Oh, what a journey. This was pre-Striders, folks — the “Bike Parent Dark Ages”. And we smiled through all of it. Sometimes that smile was immensely forced (as one or both kids were crying, and maybe myself included) but we did it. We accomplished something that I had envisioned back when my belly was enormous: we created children (now young adults) who love to ride bikes. Our younger daughter likes to ride for fun and function. She will take her hand-me-down mountain bike and meander at her pace by herself on the nearby trail, or ride her Craigslist road bike to meet friends or to commute to her summer trail building job. She’s an urban commuter at heart, which makes my environmentalist/ambassador heart so very happy. Our older daughter likes to race. She started dabbling in cyclocross a few years ago, took a brief highschool volleyball sabbatical and then came back by the way of the Colorado High School Cycling League as a Sophomore. She has goals on the bike She wants to hit the season fast and hard. She’s on a training plan created by our good family friend, Katie Compton. She’s dedicated to racing. And last night for the first time ever…she beat me. That’s right. This little honey… …beat her 42-year-old mom at the local Rattler Race Series. We had both signed up for the Sport Class. I haven’t raced for a while and was abnormally nervous. I’ve mostly hung up my Cat 3 Sidi’s but this summer I’ve vowed to put them back on for her. On the drive to the race, she was playing the latest song she’d found on TikTok “to get us pumped”. She told me where race registration was. She lead our warm-up openers that KFC had given her. She was jockeying for the perfect start position and all of the sudden…she was dropping me on the first climb. Learn How to Raise a Shred Girl with Katie Macarelli on The Consummate Athlete Podcast It took me ⅔ of a lap to reel her in on the flats. This made sense and was what she predicted. I have size on my side with this. I told her from the start I was going to “race-race”. I wasn’t going to pull any punches (but secretly I was the one who was nervous she’d drop the hammer on me). As I looked over my shoulder and saw her falling back, I chuckled to myself and thought, “Yep. Still got it, baby. You’re not there yet.” On the second lap at the exact same spot, guess what? She went around me and said, “C’mon, mommy. Breathe,” and then she dropped me. Which also made me chuckle. But that chuckle soon turned to gasps as I worked ever so hard to catch her. On one of the last straightaways, I went to lock out my suspension (to really crank the speed) and in doing so, broke the lever clean off. That’s how hard I was trying. But she was still in my sights! Coming into the last tricky corner before the final descent (a bridge, I’d nearly pitched myself right off of on the first lap) I was close. How close? A lovely friend/photographer of mine, caught this epic shot and it says it all. Note, Bella’s position of bad-assery. Note me standing up trying to catch her with a massively proud smile on my face. Note my Cat 3 Sidi’s with the broken buckle hanging off one side that I’m too lazy to replace (because does it really matter?). The photographer Jim Heuck captured something perfectly perfect in this shot. More than the race, he captured parenthood. He captured me passing the torch to my bad-ass daughter. A daughter I was petrified I wouldn’t be able to raise the “right” way. So this is a shout-out to all prospective parents or parents of young kids. It will be great. You can do it. You ARE doing it. Keep doing it! Keep working with them, reading to them, hugging them, loving them, PLAYING with them. Because some day, they will smoke you on the trail, and if you’re not lucky enough to have a professional photographer catch it, it doesn’t really matter. You will have already captured it in your heart.
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Maghalie Rochette is a Cyclocross-ing Shred Girl with some AMAZING Advice
Maghalie Rochette is one of the cyclocross racers I’ve interviewed more than any other—because in addition to winning A TON of races, like the recent Cyclocross World Cup in Iowa City and 2018 Pan-American Championships in Ontario, she also gives back a ton to the sport with her CXFEVER initiative and fun projects like her Faces of Cross interviews (she’s also interviewed me!). I’m obsessed with the neck gaiters (everyone needs a buff!) that she has out this year, and the proceeds from that go back to Cyclocross Canada, which will get a bunch of young racers (a lot of women!) over to Europe for racing this season. At the recent Waterloo Cyclocross World Cup, she and I sat down and watched her Jingle Cross World Cup win and talked through it, chatted about all things cyclocross, and she told me how she became a Shred Girl IRL. You can check out her Jingle Cross highlights at FloBikes here, or listen to her explain her race at Waterloo here. How did you get started in cycling? I started when I was really young—my dad was mountain biking. I loved all different sports. I skateboarded, played basketball… but my dad kept coming home muddy and I thought, ‘that looks pretty fun.’ So I got a bike and started riding with him. Favorite moment in cycling? I love it when you’re cornering and you feel your bike is not the perfect tool for the job and you’re right on the limit and about to crash and you save it. Cornering and feeling like you have perfect traction—that feeling is amazing. When you’re going super fast on technical singletrack and barely keeping it together. How did you choose between cyclocross and MTB? I’ve been playing in both disciplines for a while and I felt like I had a hard time at being 100% always. I felt like I was always at 90%. So I decided I wanted to see how good I could be if I put everything into cyclocross. I didn’t want to have that—it wasn’t an excuse because it was real—but I didn’t want to have the excuse that I was tired because I was racing. I wanted to be 100% responsible for what happened to me. I wanted to be fully committed, and if I failed, it wouldn’t be because I was tired or because I was racing too much. Did you miss racing MTB? I get a bit of FOMO with races I’d like to do but I try to enjoy what I am doing. I got to spend more time at home training and seeing family and friends and I tired to focus on that instead of watching other people racing. But I also drew inspiration seeing so many of my friends crush it this summer. Tell me about the One Percent! We made a short documentary to show that training can be fun. We went bikepacking and I wanted to show that there are some days when you don’t want to get on the bike and train. But it is fun, it is intense, and at the end of the day, I’m riding bikes because I enjoy it. I did this with three friends– David (my partner) and two of my friends I grew up training with. I love bikepacking where I’m doing 200 kilometers in one direction, sleeping there, and coming back. I don’t focus on watts, and it’s a great way to get in a bunch of big miles while having fun. View this post on Instagram What is your 1%? • The One Percent — Coming to you on September 4th. • Can’t wait to share this fun project with you all 🤗 A @zacturgeon & @antoine__caron production. • • #theonepercent #thegreattrail @clifbar @thegreattrail A post shared by Maghalie Rochette (@maghroch) on Aug 31, 2019 at 6:12am PDT How do you deal with failures? I’ve had so many failures—all of them, you get so much experience from that. And that leads to the successes. It’s great having those failures because it gives you room to improve. Best advice for new riders? The fun thing about cyclocross is that it looks terrifying but it isn’t. No one will judge you for walking or running an obstacle or section. Watch a World Cup race and a lot of the best people in the world will walk a feature. It’s totally OK. I think that’s really key to understand. Sometimes, we’re scared that we’ll be the only one running a section but it’s totally fine. And everyone is doing laps for themselves—we lose track of who is where. If you get three laps or four laps, no one cares. My best advice is to just go try it: see how fun it will be. It’s a very welcoming community, and that’s probably my favorite thing about cyclocross. Everyone is a family.
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Get Ready for Next Season with Shred Girls Coaching!
Big news in Shred Girls Land: I’m excited to introduce Shred Girls Coaching, one-on-one weekly coaching for girls ready to crush their cycling goals. After two years of having the book series and this site up and running, I’ve realized that there are a ton of riders and readers who aren’t sure exactly how to keep their bike love rolling forward, seeing improvements and having fun in their racing. As I’ve coached camps and clinics in recent years, I’ve also realized that I have a huge passion for helping teen girls find their cycling focus, figure out the major blocks that make up a good, strong training foundation, and crush their racing. So, I’m starting to take on a few coaching clients. Here’s the deets! Who it’s for Beginner-to-intermediate level Shred Girls (age 14-23) looking to streamline their training in mountain biking, cyclocross or road, and take their riding to the next level I’m looking for motivated young athletes who may even already work with a local team and attend weekly practices with a coach, but are looking for a bit of structure in their riding, mobility and strength work. Trying to juggle cross country running with cross country riding? I can help make a schedule that will help you reach both goals without burning out. Hoping to hit a podium at this year’s NICA events? Yep, we can work towards that too. My goal is to help you continue to improve on the bike… without losing your love of pedaling or getting burned out! What you get with Shred Girls Coaching: Initial phone call to discuss your goals/plans/current training/race calendar Daily training plan and log (via Google Sheets) with your workout (both on- or off-bike) plus added notes on things like mobility and nutrition—this is also where you’ll record what actually happened that day and how you felt! Regular check-ins and plan updates as needed Unlimited email for questions/chats Access to the private Facebook group where you’ll join other Shred Girls around the world who are all working and training to get better Exclusive PDF + video content for strength and mobility workouts plus nutrition advice First dibs on events, clinics and camps AND… After 3 months, if you’ve been filling in your training log and staying consistent, I’ll mail you a Shred Girls jersey plus a copy of my upcoming book, The Athlete’s Guide to Sponsorship! Price: $99/month Interested? Fill out this intake form and we’ll get started! Once you’ve filled out the Shred Girls Coaching Intake Form, we’ll set up a time to hop on a call to get all the details of your goals and talk through how coaching will work and what to expect. (For girls under 18, your parent or guardian will need to sign a waiver, and will need to get on the phone to talk through the process as well.) (Note: Right now, there are only 10 spots available, so if you’re interested, get in touch soon!) Questions? Email me at molly <at> theoutdooredit.com Not quite ready to commit to coaching but want some structure in your training? Check out this 8-week training plan PDF designed for girls balancing school and training! Who is your coach? Molly Hurford is a cycling coach and journalist in love with all things cycling, running, nutrition and movement-related. When not outside, she’s writing about being outside, travel, and athletic style on TheOutdoorEdit.com or for outlets like Bicycling, Canadian Cycling and Outside magazine. She’s the author of multiple books including “Mud, Snow and Cyclocross” and “Fuel Your Ride” and her most recent project, Shred Girls, is a young adult fiction series, website and now, coaching service focused on getting girls excited about bikes. She’s raced every discipline of cycling, from road to cyclocross to track to MTB to sprint triathlon to Ironman. She’s coached with the Ontario Cycling Association, cyclocross superstar Ellen Noble’s ENCX Quest camp, the Canadian National Team’s U23 and junior winter endurance camps, and regularly hosts camps and clinics. She’s a USA Cycling certified cycling coach, a registered yoga teacher with the Yoga Alliance, a Precision Nutrition Level 1 coach, and a PMBI-certified MTB skills coach. After 14 years of racing, riding, studying, interviewing and digging into the science of performance and what makes us enjoy the ride, she’s a little obsessed with getting more women psyched on adventure and being outside. With that, she regularly hosts talks, clinics and camps for cyclists… And in her spare time, she races on trails! She’ll be joined by longtime coach Peter Glassford of SmartAthlete, who will act as a consulting coach and help lead camps and clinics as well as work to create the best possible training plans for you!
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