Riding bicycles uphill is a metaphor for my life. It is extremely, ridiculously hard work. Summiting is a unique joy. I love the combo. The discipline to get there enables many benefits. The perspectives and friendships I gain are among my most formative and valued.

Stats: Ranked #1 in Age & Gender-adjusted 2022 Mt. Washington Bicycle Hill Climb and Age Group undefeated since 2013. Hold the 60-65 and the 65-70 AG mountain records on Mt. Washington. Organized first 60 year old 4-woman RAAM team 2017. Hoping that record will be broken!

2013 This whole competitive cycling thing is a complete surprise and mystery.  I hardly feel it is me.  But I will admit that all my life I thought I could have "been a contender"  and somehow I pulled it off in my 50's. HUGE credit is due to my coach (2012 - 2019 until I moved to CT), Marti Shea, who is probably the greatest uphill woman climber of all time. I am not in her league , NOT REMOTELY! Nor would I have framed the goal as she did. I didn't consider myself a very serious cyclist. In 2012 she congratulated me for getting on to the podium and went on to say I had the potential to be on top if I worked for it - did I want to use it or not?  That scared the heck out of me. I had already worked harder than in any physical endeavor in my lifetime of 51 years at that point. But after thinking about it for a couple weeks, I stepped up.  It was worth it. 

2011 - How Mt. Washington became my life-saving goal 2013 was the athletic thrill of my life, but my first summit in 2011 was more rewarding than that. It is only bested in terms of life experiences by being a mother. 2011 was about surviving adversity and recovering from severe injury and loss, not about athleticism. It wasn’t clear I’d get my brain back from a head injury due to a bike accident which involved many other damaged body parts as well, or whether I’d be able to make a living. In that same span of weeks in 2010 I lost my company, my net worth, and a bewildering collection of deeply painful personal losses. That cluster, the swirling storm of loss, perhaps sent by the gods to test my mettle, swept everything away except perhaps my natural optimism and the love of my close circle. I understood I was in serious trouble. I needed a big goal that was more precise than survival, to climb out of that void. In those overwhelming moments of realization, the inspiration came to me to try to recover well enough to ride up Mt. Washington. It seemed impossible yet I believed it wasn’t. Slowly, over the course of a year, I grew strong again. 14 months later I rode up that Rockpile bursting with joy. Took me 1:51 but of course my only goal was to summit. And I did. The emotional intensity of that moment was beyond my ability to describe in words. It was a foothold into the next chapter of my life. I became grateful in a way that had not previously been imaginable to me. I also became more purposeful, though one wouldn’t have said I hadn’t been already. How to make the best use of every day, not just for myself, but much more broadly, is still a daily question. And along with most survivors, I don’t take a happy moment, or any moment, for granted.

2013  Mt. Washington & BUMPS 1st place age group, 5th place overall  and in the age/gender adjusted standings - #1 woman and #17 guy . To my additional great surprise, I also  finished second overall in the BUMPS series in 2013.  It’s a Points Series (so I wasn’t second fastest - just got the most points) of uphill time trials on the largest New England Mountains.  Yep.   Click here for  2013 BUMPS Series Results

2014  Setbacks. Appreciating my Good Fortune. And a DRIVE up the Auto Road The year started super strong then devolved into injuries and multiple surgeries. It included a driver plowing his car into me.  He never looked left to take a right turn on red. Didn't hear my screams.  I was slowly turning at about 5 mph.  My bike was totaled though I limped away.  I narrowly escaped going under his wheel. It happens.  Miss that bike.  We need to make the roads safer for everyone, somehow!  One terrific highlight for 2014 however was being there at the summit to cheer everyone on. I'd never been a Mt. Washington spectator and it is a particular thrill.  Can't describe - you have to experience it. Driving up, so I could take riders down, was so fun. Here is that video with my dear old friend Olga from The Netherlands riding shotgun. It so sobering to watch that video and take in how long and hard a drive it is … in a car!!

2015   Recovery and another Rockpile Run I struggled back. Fell short of my time goal but managed 1st place age group, 12th place overall Women, and in age/gender adjusted standings - #1 woman and #12 person.   I LOVE how older athletes move up in the rankings if they can hang in there.  Nature is not terribly kind on our bodies but it's worth fighting for fitness...pays many dividends.  I didn't race the BUMPS series in 2015.

WOW.  Just rereading this, as I add in my 2015 results, gives me shivers. I have some new goals for the 2016 season.  Come on up to the races!

2016  It's December 30th and I'm just getting around to posting this.  Been a busy year! It was  an intense and exhausting lead up to the race with an extremely demanding work life, lots of travel, commuting to New Haven from Boston, many changes, also struggles with challenging mechanical issues. Such a list!  For a time my life was pretty simple.  Work.  Train.  Recover from training.  Lots of body work and a crazy amount of ice baths.  I have ice baths worked out to a total science.  Must publish my methodology... I went into Mt. W with a package of goals.  Topmost objective was to finish with absolutely nothing in the tank regardless of my standings. Done. I also wanted to win and set a record for my age group.  Done (by 2.5 minutes).  Also wanted to set one for the next one down. Missed by a mile!! I realized early in the race that I was not having a peak day but I hung in and rode that race like my life depended on it.  At the summit I felt wasted, happy, proud, very emotional ... and aware that I might not be quite finished yet with this thing I  have going with the Rockpile.  We'll see. 

2017 RAAM I am writing this entry in October of 2018 - 16 months later I am still digesting. Perhaps that’s an adequate measure of how consuming RAAM (Race Across America) was. Here is the caption which I wrote the morning after this 3 AM finish line photo June 25th 2017: “Our 19 member Team at the finish line last night. www.teambrighamhealth.com. Together we established a 60 year old 4-woman RAAM category/record to beat! To say that it was a team effort is a gross understatement. I need a way to explain what the 15 did to keep the 4 on bikes turning the pedals. One really can't comprehend the full complexity and extent of the deployment, even from within the belly of the beast of this perpetual motion machine which rolled across America. But the commitment to succeed with our sense of humor and mutual caring intact, was abundantly evident. These are talented, good-hearted people, each with unique reasons for joining the undertaking, all with a powerful commitment to mission and willingness to go above and beyond. And we had fun! Thank you (generally left to right) Karen, Dave, Phil, Ana, Jeff, Turner, Margaret, Tom, Dreux, Caroline, me, Neil, Buzz, Peter, Susan, Mick, Mary, Barb and Beth. ❤️🌈🚴 I know why I did it. I still don’t really comprehend how I pulled off the training, recruiting and fundraising while holding down a job - to make it to the starting line. But it’s very clear what it took to get to the finish - the team. My three cycling teammates are talented and accomplished athletes above my pay grade. The Crew was the same caliber, outstanding people with an extraordinary collection of accomplishments and heart. More soon. At least I got something posted here.” NOTE: Not pictured here is teammate Mary Hynes Johanson who stood by as our sub until the starting line - after which no subs are allowed. You go with what you’ve got.

2023 SAD UPDATE We lost Dave Eldridge this summer at the young age of 70. He had a huge footprint. Not just the winningest RAAM Crew Chief of all time, but surely among the most beloved and respected. A colleague Tom Kingery sums it up, ““He was a master of efficiency, a tireless preparer and getting the best out of everyone around him. A quiet leader and one of the very best human beings I’ve ever had the privilege to meet and race for. He will be missed by many.” Dave’s obituary is HERE

2017 Slow Time. Age Group Win. NO HATE on Mt. Washington. I had not planned to race it in 2017. I had expected to be burnt out mentally from RAAM and for sure I was. I was enjoying just riding with no training pressure or goals. Taking it easy. The back room of my life was also a mess and I had to catch up from the intense RAAM push where all I did was ride, work and have RAAM fundraising and organizing calls. So I didn’t train for the Rockpile. But as it approached I couldn’t resist. I considered it a new kind of challenge to simply ride it knowing I couldn’t win and wouldn’t turn in good numbers. I wasn’t trained and ready. I hadn’t dropped to racing weight. Nonetheless I jumped in late and by race day wanted to ride it with maximum effort anyway. I thought of it as character building. I approached the starting line with the same intensity, dread, excitement and self questioning as I always do. It seemed to be an auto response not under my control. Off we went and Holy Moly. I had power I had not comprehended. I have never ridden a stronger, steadier race. Very smooth power line with very slight drop from start to finish. No moment of weakness the whole way up. Strong, steady, motivated. And I rode it at 11% increase in power vs my 2016 record. Unimaginable. In fact as I saw my power numbers I began to think that I would crush my PR and no doubt that helped me roll. Then it began to dawn on me. The power was there but the speed was not. I was carrying a lot of weight up the mountain. Still, I hung in and gave it my all. It was my best race effort psychologically and physically. I finished with nothing. It was a still day and really nearly perfect conditions. No weather excuse. Same bike. Same gear. Nothing else changed, literally, except my weight. It’s a dramatic demonstration of the power:mass ratio in climbing. Also just plain good fun in that Mt. W suffering kind of way that is repaid in spades at the finish. The weightless and most weighty thing I did carry up that day, was a wish to improve the quality of dialog between increasingly fractious ends of the political spectrum. I feel our civil society is losing even the desire to seek a place of common ground. Indeed the COMMON GOOD is not something we seem to have much agreement on and increasingly I wonder how many of us, on any side of the often absurd arguments, are filtering what we say and do for how it impacts the Commons - not just our human Commons but that of all lving things. So I rode that race, posted forward and aft, with the simplest two words I could find to characterize my hope for society. NO HATE.

2018 Children Come First I had promised my kids that I was going to retire from racing after RAAM. It was somewhat dangerous and was an all consuming effort. They took me seriously and my daughter planned her wedding for 8-18-18 - Mt. Washington weekend! So I took it as a gift from the gods and had a remarkably relaxed summer. All social riding. No racing at all. Once I let go of the Rockpile target I found I had no appetite for all the complexity of racing. For a little while I plotted travelling to other mountain races from the Kitzhbuhl Horn in Austria to Mt. Evans in Colorado or Haleakala in Hawaii. But my heart wasn’t in it. I let it go. Eleanna and Mike’s wedding was as sweet, happy, loving and fun as could possibly be (can’t resist sharing the happy photos below). Having taken a year off I think I’m ready to come back and do at least one more serious run up Mt. Washington. Maybe I move on to something else after that. Maybe more time on the water and with my paint box.

2019 Mt. Washington Well my 2018 prediction was correct. I couldn’t resist . I did not break my own record. But there is always next year. I finished 11th among women of all ages. Not bad. I won my age group but…. no-one else showed! Getting to the starting line is half the battle.

2020 Zwift Racing and Cycling Activism While Covid was a global tragedy there were silver linings for some. I used my flexibility in many good ways. Among them was timing my training rides optimally. No more squeezing them into my commute to work. While still a friend and huge fan of Marti, I switched to a local coach, Aidan Charles of CCNS, to be part of a team and more fully embrace my new Connecticut home. Ironically, we spent two years racing on the virtual platform Zwift and hardly ever saw each other in person, but it was actually very personal. We got to know each other in new ways. In regular racing there isn’t much conversation while on the road. On Zwift our team and coach are all on the audio channel while racing on our indoor trainers and watching our team Avatars work the course. Strange, brutally intense, but oddly satisfying. Same with training camps. It’s a whole different side that comes out. Well, during the race our side of the conversation is limited as every breath counts. We are mostly listening to race strategy and directions from the coach. But questions and comments reveal a lot about how we each are experiencing the race - real time. Very cool. We raced with people all over the world and found new cycling friends. It got us through and I came to really enjoy it. Worked my way up to AG#10 worldwide on the Zwift Power point system. I was in the shape of my life and hoping until the last minute that the Mt. W race would be on. Ah well, there were so much more important things happening. I painted a lot, further indulging my love of nature, and I tried to be helpful with pro-bono work. One of my most satisfying efforts was to co-lead Wheels of Change in the summer of 2020. I had been playing with writing Strava messages on my rides. It came to me to take it up a level and the idea caught hold with others. Six hundred+ cyclists wrote these 100 mile long letters along the coast of New England in July 2020 using Strava technology and some of our own developed by one of our own big brains from the Winchester Rippers. MIT Physicist Darren Garnier figured out how to put all this together simultaneously. The message spanned from NY to ME.

2022 Grandmother sets new record, earns #1 Age/Gender-Adjusted Spot Somehow I still am at it. Trained hard notwithstanding January Covid and broken ribs (ice hockey on first day out of Covid Quarantine) and my first grandchild (JOY!!!) who arrived in March, and many other distractions. Rode it again as if my life depended on it. Thought I could hit sub 1:20. Alas it was not to be. So I guess I have to go back because I believe I can go do it, even as the years click by, if I get that right day. I did win my AG again and set a new AG record (65-70!! - lowered my prior record). The course was officially changed this year and all prior records reset. My 2016 AG 60-65 record still beats the best numbers for that AG this year. They thought it would be faster because they paved the dirt section. I don’t think it was as the road is really carved up from all the heavy equipment. I loved the dirt and miss it. It provided a mental break of going from pavement to dirt and back to pavement. But whatever the speed impact, I did take a minute off my own record. I think I am beginning to learn how to ride this thing right. Every year I get closer and yet I still have more to learn to ride the Rockpile optimally. I was happy with the record and the AG win of course, but pretty disappointed with what I thought was a slow time. Won’t go into my dissection of what didn’t go quite right here as this post is already too long. But what I did do right was get to the starting line race-ready as best I could, and rode it hard. I was rewarded with the astonishing ranking of #1 with the new Age & Gender-Adjusted standings that are now based on the history of Mt. Washington races. Of all the riders on the mountain on this day, August 20, 2022, when adjusted according to the age & gender grading curves, I was in the top spot. I learned this the day after the race while I was still beating myself up for the slow-ish time. The time that age is making harder and harder to beat. So it was a great day! My friend/RAAM teammate Mary Hynes Johanson, came in 2nd!! It forced me to reconsider the whole thing. And THAT, I think, is one of the major reasons why we should produce those standings. It gives perspective and context to older riders at all levels of ability. It provides satisfaction as we battle through the obstacles presented by age and gravity and watch our competition step back. Increasingly we are racing against ourselves. I am now working to advance and embrace AGE in cycling. Ageism is holding us all back and is very expensive to society, culturally and economically, and in terms of the quality of our lives. The following week I got to spend two days babysitting my wonderful 5 month old grandson, Theo. From the top of the mountain to the top of my career thus far as a grandmother. We sang and danced and I don’t know where the time went.

ABOUT AGE-GRADED DATA 2022 FOOTNOTE

As we all know, drawing conclusions from data manipulation is a nuanced business. I have been working with some folks who have been studying age-grading for years, as part of my initiative to make cycling more friendly to riders in the upper Age Groups and for women: Data scientist Alan Jones, who built the original age-graded curves for World Track & Field and Economist Ray Fair of Yale, who also built curves with a different methodology and published some of his research. MY PLATFORM AND LINKS to Alan’s and Ray’s work are HERE. And a broader piece by Ray Fair on age effects in athletics is HERE. A problem with most event-based data sets is the classic issue of “small numbers/small data samples” for both women and older riders. So the curve is less reliable when you get up in the older AGs in cycling. However there is much more data in running and swimming, though in all sports it thins out, especially for women. Scholars hypothesize the curve will not vary much between men’s results and women’s decline in capability, or between running/swimming and cycling. Those are details at the margins which are important to scientific accuracy. Time and larger data samples will tell.

What won’t change is that from age 40 to 80, athletes lose nearly half of their potential (from 35-40 it is only 1% of the loss). An athlete turning in a 40 min time at age 80, according to the curve, would have had her/his best race in 26 minutes at age 40 (divide the 80 year old time by 1.5 to get the age-adjusted equivalent time – see the calculations HERE). Older athletes will have slower times than younger ones. But age-graded, in other words, relative to their age, they may be crushing the youngsters’ numbers. That is good for them individually.  But bigger picture, if more older people are more active, either at the competitive level or casually, it will be good for society. It will lower healthcare costs, improve quality of life, extend life expectancies, change stereotypic expectations, open doors, increase connections between generations. There is plenty of research on this. It’s a big deal.

Back to age-grading on Mt. Washington, if you apply the data sets accumulated from all the male runners’ best performances (world records) in all events by age, you get a slightly different curve from the one cited above which is based on the history of all results on Mt. Washington, which overstates my performance because there are so few women over 60 who have ridden up the Rockpile. That “Men’s Curve” calculation puts Phil Gaimon #1 overall and also age-graded last year. It puts me in the #2 slot. I am hoping to help inspire the next generation of elite athletes to hang in there and help us find the physiological truth. Meanwhile, I am just a place-holder encouraging more people to come on out and do this! I hope my records and Age-Graded results fall sooner rather than later.

2023 HEADLINE   RACE CANCELLED. Severe summit weather. Best Fundraiser & Riding with Trail Blazer John Allis. Shortly before the starting gun during last minute rituals, on a rainy, cold, windy but totally rideable day at the base, the race was called because of extreme conditions at the summit. Most of the support cars were already there and having trouble. We all know there is a chance of this when we sign up, and maybe part of the appeal. I would say it’s been wild in some way for a third of the races I have competed in since 2011, though this was my first cancellation. It is not for the faint of heart. Re Fundraising for the Tin Mountain Conservation Center - the event raised $66k and the Tin MOuntaineam was thrilled. My F&F contributed over $5k of that. No podiums this year, but this was a great result!

I had been fighting bronchitis and expected it to be my toughest climb ever and the end of my undefeated streak. I thought it was unlikely that I’d have the juice to ride the whole thing and would be walking it in. Warm up was abysmal. Seriously wanted to scratch. But decided this was a challenge I needed to undertake. Was the right thing to do. Was the brave thing. Wasn’t in danger. Just wasn’t likely to be fun until the finish. Likely would be gratifying though. Just moments after I resolved to set aside my ego and comfort, and go anyway, while getting my race bike off the car, I heard the news. I can’t articulate how relieved I was, both to have decided to make the attempt and then to be excused from it…by the gods. That was close.

A wonderful consolation prize was a Saturday ride with John Allis.  We hosted him and his wonderful journalist/photographer wife Kim, at our ski club.  He was the winner of the first Mt. Washington Race 50 years ago and also a three time Olympian and one of the first Americans to race in Europe when the French still thought that Americans were biologically unfit for this sport. He earned their respect. Bill Humphrey’s, one of the other inaugural riders with a serious racing pedigree as well, was there and had been intending to ride up!! Alas he couldn’t join us that afternoon. Here is John with his original steel Raleigh fixie (!) and his original Merino sponsorship jersey which is held together at the neck with a large safety pin. His gear bag is seriously ripped and he has the oldest hand pump I have ever seen on a bike in use. This is not staging.  He rides this way. Mind you he is a partner in one of the best bike shops ever, Wheelworks of Belmont, MA (which sponsored my Atlanta-Boston Homeless Shelter Ride in 2009). So he can have whatever gear he wants.  I rode on his wheel as we all were flying down hills and he was doing 150 RPMs on his fixie – you cannot NOT pedal. 150 RPMs is my guess. Try it.  Then he would do JUST FINE going up the next hill in his ONE GEAR.  It was a thing to see.  He doesn’t exactly know his RPMs, nor his FTP, Lactic Threshold, watts, HR, respiration rate, elevation, miles, pace, temperature, calories burned, etc…  He doesn’t use the electronics we take for granted. He just goes out and works hard and has fun on his bicycle.  We all want to be John Allis on a fixie at age 81!! It was also fun to have someone older than me on a ride.

My plan is to take time off from racing the Rockpile to do other things. Then come back to attempt a 70-74 Age Group Record. Impossibly, that is somehow just two years away (racing age is as of December 31). I can do that!  Then 75-79, 80-84…. And so on.  No woman over 80** has raced up Mt. Washington yet to my knowledge. So I kind of have to do it if I am so lucky to be still capable! Only 13 years from now. With each passing year I wonder how long I can keep it up.  It’s a lot of torque. But older men have done it.  So we can too. Test case..

 **Maybe 75 – records (including my 60-64 record) were wiped off the website when they paved the auto road last year – but It’s either 75 or 80.  I can’t remember.  Used to seem so far away. Need to research. I was totally charmed to learn that John had competed and won again some years after the inaugural race. But had forgotten all about it until someone was researching his participation for the 50th. 

2021 Reunion of Winchester Ripper Friends at the Summit of the race. Wonderful, impressive, loving, supportive, fun, and very special group of people. It is hard to imagine not being there with them. Many of us stay at a rustic ski club together and go through the whole roller coaster, including the post-race swimming hole swim and beers in the Wildcat River.