Recently, while on a trip back to my hometown in Northwest Ohio, an old friend asked me, “What do you like about cycling?” It took a little hemming and hawing, but I finally settled on “I really love constantly challenging myself and doing things I never really thought I could.” If you had told my ten-year-old self, ripping around pavement on my mid-1990’s clunky mountain bike, that I would be doing the same, on dirt in California, I would’ve been overjoyed. The first step was to get somewhere with some topography.
As a kid, I was the nerdy tomboy, digging up worms, playing all the sports, and doing school reports on obscure animals (e.g., hyrax, look them up, they’re rad). Luckily, my parents humored my interests by taking me on camping trips, canoeing, and cycling around Ohio and Michigan. These interests developed into a passion for conservation, science, and of course a dose of adventure. After college, I began traveling North America working 3–9-month seasonal positions conducting wildlife field research. These jobs often had me living out of a tent, hiking endless miles up mountains, trudging through thigh deep mud, and kayaking in 3-foot white caps. Professionally, I might say I did it for a deeper understanding of nature, to do my part for conservation, or to be a part of the scientific process, but truthfully, I just liked it. I liked pushing myself to continue a 2,000-foot hike in search of a Northern Spotted Owl at 2:00 AM. I liked high stepping through the Alaskan tundra chasing goslings and dodging moose, while sustaining myself solely on Cliff Bars. I even kind of liked slightly losing my mind to the endless cackles of laughing gulls while sitting in a 2x2x4 foot observation blind…The puffins made it worth it. While this may sound insane to some, riding your bike for 8+ hours, with 9,000+ ft of climbing while only eating gels and granola bars will sound insane to others. I love them both.
While I grew up riding a bike, I didn’t really get into it, until I decided I wanted to try a triathlon. This was back in my vagabonding days when I was living in a bunkhouse near “civilization” and finally saved up enough money to buy a road bike. I quickly came to my senses, dropped the running and swimming, and started to spend my free time in the saddle. After seven years of seasonal work, I started graduate school in Colorado, and quickly got distracted by rock climbing. Cycling took a back seat for bit. In 2019 a back injury sidelined me for nearly a year, but one of the few things that still felt slightly ok was riding my bike. For several months all I could handle was the four-mile commute to campus, but as I began to recover, I slowly bumped up my mileage and fell back in love with the bike.
After finishing grad school and moving to California for one of the highly sought after, full-time jobs in my field, a friend introduced me to gravel. I promptly bought myself a gravel bike and have since done several of the Grasshopper Adventure Series races, the 100-mile Lost & Found Race, dabbled in cyclocross, and completed a weeklong bikepacking trip in Slovenia and Croatia. I’ve found gravel taps into some of those same experiences I had doing wildlife field work, constantly pushing myself mentally and physically. Not to mention the people I’ve met doing both are truly the most amazing.
This past year, I decided to take racing a little more seriously and joined Breakaway Women’s Racing. The team has certainly motivated me to push myself and continue to develop my skills. After some encouragement from teammates, I decided to race cyclocross in the Women’s B category this year. The pace, skills, and strategy, bring out my competitive side, which has been dormant since my high school basketball days. Now which is my favorite: cross, gravel, mountain, or bikepacking? I’m not sure, they all tap into my need to push myself and drive to explore. Needless to say, I sure am lucky to have a wonderful community to ride with.
Kelsey Navarre
