Riding Like Hell on Two Delicate Wheels -
Vermont's Cycling Phenoms

by Amy Lilly

Road bicycle racing is a sport that tends to have one face around the world-a man's face. In this country, that face is usually Lance Armstrong's. But there is a solid cadre of women in the U.S. who have risen to the challenge of road racing, one of the most mentally and physically demanding of sports in spite of full-time careers, pregnancy, children, a near-complete lack of media coverage. And pain.

"I have never been in a race where I didn't want to quit in the first 20 minutes, it's so painful," veteran racer MaryAnn Martinez, 46, of Waterbury, says cheerfully.

But, then again, Martinez usually wins. "It's a sport that's in your head," she explains. "It's about strategy. It's about how you think about yourself."

Nationally, women road racers are increasing at about the same rate as men, five to seven percent a year over the last five years, according to Andy Lee at USA Cycling, the umbrella organization for all types of competitive biking. But they still make up only 15 percent of the United States Cycling Federation (USCF)'s membership, which is required for racing.

Vermont, which hosts one of New England's biggest stage races, the Green Mountain Stage Race, may be a friendlier state than most for women racers. Kate Farrell, 30, of Richmond, who got into racing while at Cornell University and rode for a team out of Rhode Island in 2000 and 2001, trained exclusively with men in upstate New York because there simply were no women around who could ride at her level. It was only when she moved to Vermont in 2003 that she was able to train with other women. "It was a different experience," she comments. "When you're biking with men, they always think you're a real phenom. They're so impressed. Whereas here, I don't get that attitude as much, which is great."

Anecdotally, however, they believe that the number of women racers in Vermont has remained steady. For racers of both genders, the main impediment is geography. Since most races on the National Racing Calendar, or even on the East Coast, occur out of state, Vermonters are forced to drive long hours on weekends to keep up with the race schedule, in a season where the state looks particularly beautiful.

Women's professional and amateur cycling also does not offer the opportunities or pay that enable men to make a career of it, so more aspiring women racers hold down full-time jobs. Women's competitive cycling has fewer divisions, forcing entry-level competitors to meet a very high bar just to join the sport. (Men have Professional and Categories 1-5; women have Categories 1 through 4, and were only given the Pro category in 1996.) And, of course, women tend to spend more time with family, especially in caring for the sick, and pursue other interests, often multiple competitive sports at once. They are generally polymaths, less likely than men to adopt a single-minded, "have-bike-will-travel" mentality, as Farrell puts it.

All this may explain why there is only a handful of Vermont women who compete in road racing. They are: Marielle Aunave, Kate Farrell, Carol Hakstian, MaryAnn Martinez, Jen Miller, Marianne Stover, and Elisabeth (Ellie) Wegner; and they can all rattle off each other's names. This is the face of competitive cycling in Vermont to look for, and it's a sweaty, feminine face of pure determination-and sometimes surprise and pleasure at who is having a baby or buying a house (more about women chatting while racing below). Theirs are the faces to track during Vermont's two best-known races, the Mt. Ascutney Hill Climb on July 21 and the Green Mountain Stage Race in late August, and on Web results for women's races around the country, in Canada, and, in some cases, in Europe.

The Appeal of Fear and Pain

What is it that drives these women to take on a sport that entails biking 10 to 15 hours a week after work, spending weekends on the road, and staying in motels at their own expense?

"Ellie made me do it," laughs Jen Miller, 41, of Richmond, referring to her friend and fellow competitor Elisabeth Wegner.

Miller had been doing triathlons for a few years before Wegner recruited her in 2004. Triathlon competing is a solo sport; during the cycling part, competitors must stay two or more bike lengths apart. Road biking offered Miller a chance not just to bike in a group, but "to overcome my fear of biking in a group." For anyone who has tried drafting behind another cyclist, fear is part of the game. Sustained, acute attention is needed to stay as close to that person's wheel as possible for maximum drafting advantage but still leave enough room in case the person suddenly brakes or swerves.

And it's not only the bike in front that you need to keep track of. "You have to be aware of what's going on around you. You have to watch other people; they might be sprinting off at any moment," Miller says.

Miller knows a bit about sprinting off herself. At the Coupe des Ameriques last year-the North American Masters (for over-30-year-olds) Road Championship in Quebec-Miller remembers that "during the circuit race, I wasn't expecting to feel good, but something happened and I felt inspired. I just went for it. I was going into the second lap when Carole [Hakstian] initiated a break. I followed, then she lost momentum. I was on my own. I ended up being close to a minute ahead of the next person."

Meaning - she won. She doesn't use the word, though, until asked to confirm it. "Well, I was surprised," she explains. "I have a habit of underestimating my ability in comparison with others, who have been doing it more, and for longer." Miller won in her category at the time, Category 4 (she has since moved up to Cat 3); Carole Hakstian, then a Cat 3, won in her group (Cat 1, 2, and 3).

Then Miller advises me to talk to the others instead. "I'm just a hack," she insists. "I just have the energy."

MaryAnn Martinez came to road cycling through running, which she says is how a lot of women come to it. "Running beats your body up," Martinez says, recounting her own experience of a blown out ankle. Some friends who were runners suggested biking, which involves much less stress on the joints, and drew her into mountain bike racing in 1997. They used to train by doing road biking, and Martinez would show up for the road rides on her mountain bike until one of them suggested she buy a road bike. There was no looking back.

"I loved the strategy. I love the bumping and the close quarters in road biking. In mountain biking, everyone is in her own little world. Sometimes you're out in the woods in a race and you don't see anyone on the trail at all. Road racing tends to be very social--until you reach the hills, or the finish."

The sociability of riding is one difference Martinez notes in particular between men and women cyclists. "Women lollygag," she says, recalling some races in which the officials cut the number of loops mid-race because the women were going so slowly. "When you ride with women, you chat during the ride and you all go out afterward for lunch. In races, you can be on the starting line and someone will say, 'Oh, did you know so-and-so is having a baby?!' You just can't take that away from women."

Sometimes that social dimension is a liability. During one circuit race-one of the stages of a stage race in which riders repeat a brief loop of a few miles-Martinez found herself behind two women who were chatting about where they had eaten lunch. "One even had a hand off her handlebar," she remembers. That woman lost her balance and crashed into her friend. Martinez went down, and a whole slew of women behind her followed. "I landed on my tailbone and shattered my vertebrae. I spent the rest of the summer in a body cast. I'm fine now, though," she adds with a laugh. "It only hurts when it's damp or rainy."

Strategy

The main appeal of the sport for both spectators and participants is the strategizing that goes on-mostly ad libbed in the moment-which determines who will win a race. In other words, one's ability to go fast is not the determining factor; there is also wind resistance, the changing grade of the road, and the particular abilities of the riders around you.

Kate Farrell, 30, of Richmond, who came to biking through long-distance running, compares cycling strategy to running. "If you're running a marathon, you start out at a pace you can maintain. It's all about being steady and consistent. In road biking, the dynamics change all the time: you're in a pack, which entails surges-all of a sudden the pace picks up to an all-out sprint. Air resistance increases dramatically the faster you go, so you don't want to go out on your own unless you're attacking. An attack is when someone decides to accelerate and separate, which results in a break from the main group." Attacking, it should also be noted, uses up enormous bursts of energy in races that usually last hours.

"The question is whether or not to join the attack. You want to get in a break that will be able to stay ahead of the main group until the end. But it might turn out that the people in the break are not climbers, and suddenly a hill comes up, and they're caught by the main group." At which point: all that effort for naught.

Farrell describes herself as a climber, someone generally of slight build who has the endurance and ability to peddle uphill for hours, and to suddenly accelerate on a hill if needed. Climbers' talents on the hills are balanced by sprinters' on the flats, who are generally heavier, more muscular powerhouses.

Six-foot-tall Martinez is a sprinter who excels at criteriums, or "crits." These are the insane-looking races around a tight loop no more than a few blocks square where riders are packed so densely and whiz by so fast that it is a surprise they don't crash more often. On Martinez's Connecticut-based team, which donates all its prize money to charity, there is one rider she describes as "a little billygoat." "I can be useful to her in pull team tactics," she says. That is, she can save the climber energy by riding ahead of her, or pulling, on the flats until they get to the hills.

Strategizing Life

All of these women are multitaskers on a stratospheric level. Carole Hakstian, 40, of Burlington, has been racing since 1998 and works for Vermont Energy Investment Corporation. "Women cyclists are better at balancing their lives, out of necessity," she says. "You have to work at it and become really efficient with your time. But it doesn't always go according to plan," she adds: her company recently opened an office in New Jersey, which necessitated a ten-day trip. "It's hard to bring your bike with you, and you just can't be off your bike for ten days" when you're competing.

MaryAnn Martinez is a single mother of three who has always worked in the non-profit sector; currently she works for Homeshare of Central Vermont. "I used to drag my kids to my races and sit them on the sidelines. Any woman who races will tell you you have no social life," she adds. She is currently taking some time off from biking to deal with family issues, but is planning to compete in the Master's Nationals for Road Biking in Pennsylvania in July.

Jen Miller does labor and employee relations for Citizenship and Immigration Services, a job which recently required her to fly somewhere different every week for six consecutive weeks. Then there was the addition on her house; and then her mother, who lives in Missouri, got cancer. She now travels regularly to see her. Miller says she may not find the time to race at all this season, but she is looking forward to competing in the Masters World Championship in March-in nordic skiing.

Ellie Wegner, an Obstetrics-Gynecology doctor at Fletcher Allen Healthcare, didn't even have time to talk over the phone for this article: she was doing two 36-hour stints on call. In mid-July Wegner will be riding in l'Etape du Tour, the one-day citizens' race on a section of the Tour de France route.

Marielle Aunave, a Frenchwoman who has been teaching in the Romance Language department at the University of Vermont, is currently in Italy for the season, racing at the Pro level for the Forno d'Asolo team.

Kate Farrell, who teaches high school physics and biology and will start at Essex High in the fall, left her team to earn her MS in biology at UVM. She is happy to do 30- or 60- mile group "gap rides"-crossing the Green Mountains via its steep passes, which can reach a 20 percent grade-but may do more nordic ski racing than bike racing in the coming year, like her friend Miller.

From Farrell's perspective, cycling is about much more than racing: "When I think of women in cycling in Vermont, for me the image is someone who leads a very full professional and personal life, who also loves to cycle."

Trying It Out

For women thinking of riding competitively, Farrell has this advice: the hardest thing will be just getting into the sport. The first hurdle, selecting the highly technical, expensive equipment required, is easily cleared with some good advice (and, of course, money: road bikes start at $300). And once the bike is bought, women have only to pay a license fee to the USCF to begin competing on the lowest amateur level, Cat 4. But even that level might be challenging.

"The entry level is quite high," Farrell says. "I was the best woman runner in my college when I started biking, and I was blown out of the water" by the competition. The reason is that relatively few women compete, and it is not financially viable for biking organizations sanctioned by the USCF to hold small races. As a result, women's races are often set up so that Cats 1, 2, and 3 are grouped together, leaving only Cat 4 separate. Racers must earn points through a system of finishing times and number of races completed to move up the levels, so anyone just starting out will be in the same pool as women who are on the cusp of becoming Cat 3's. (In men's races, each race generally has a winner not only in each of the 5 categories and in Pro, but in multiple age groups within each category; and they often hold races for single categories.)

Women's racing is caught in a Catch-22: for more categories to be financially viable, more women have to join, yet women are intimidated by the speeds at which they must ride in the lowest category even to stay with the pack.

Once you're in, though, you may not be able to stay away. Martinez had officially retired a few years ago when she strolled down to see the Green Mountain Stage Race, and that was the end of her spectating from the sidelines.

Miller's resolve as a biker seems to have increased with challenge. One of the many "epic rides" she has done with Ellie Wegner included a training ride of more than a hundred miles over four gaps in the Green Mountains. A difficult enough ride in mid-summer weather-but they did it in early October. "We got all weather on that ride: sunshine, rain, snow, hail. We had agreed that if either one of said we wanted to bail, we'd bail. But neither of us wanted to be the one to say it!"

If racing is not likely to be flooded with converts over the next decade, all the women racers I talked to agreed that an increasing number of those colorfully clad, helmetted cyclists powering up and down the state's better-paved roads are women.

"I've noticed a lot more women out riding their bikes, just recreationally, than I ever remember seeing before," says Hakstian, who has lived here since before her racing days began in 1998. "You can ride and do this sport at so many levels-recreation, transportation, rehab. It's a lifelong sport. I'll always have a bike!"

Just last weekend, Farrell glimpsed the true heart of women's cycling in Vermont. Out on a ride around Richmond with a friend, they spotted a lawnmower for sale by the road. Her friend happened to be in the market for one, so they stopped at the house to ask about it. A woman in her fifties answered the door, chatted with the two for a while, and then waved good-bye as they got on their bikes again. "Have a great ride!" she called out. "I'm hoping to get a ride in myself today!"

Associate Editor Amy Lilly lives in Burlington.