The cycling community is huge in Durango. I bet you could write an entire book about it, and as someone who grew up here, I can say with certainty that it is the reason I am racing and riding today.
Cycling is an interesting sport in that it’s extremely individual. Putting road racing aside, most aspects of the competitive cycling world revolve around the capabilities and triumphs of an individual. So how does one find community or camaraderie or even friends in this competitive environment that doesn’t have a team structure?
Over the last four years of racing professionally in the gravel scene, I have found some of my closest friendships. Maybe it’s the shared time training for 100-mile events, or maybe it’s knowing the challenges we face while out in the Kansas hills for 10 or more hours, but there is a unique bond that forms in the gravel peloton.
This past July, I was training for the Leadville MTB 100. It’s not quite a gravel race, but it’s close enough with 95% of the course being gravel roads and many professional gravel racers marking the event as a key race to target.
Here in Durango, we have ideal training grounds for Leadville: high altitude, easy access to dirt roads at 10,000 feet, close proximity to the town of Leadville and loads of locals who are also doing the race. Luckily for me, I live here and truly enjoy all the opportunities this town has to offer to help me get ready for this event.
My coach had prescribed some longer climbing intervals to help prepare and simulate the type of effort I would be doing during Leadville; unfortunately, these are my least favorite efforts because I find it hard to push myself solo over multiple 20-minute intervals. Ironic given the individuality of the sport, I know.
However, this time around, I invited two of my good friends, Maude and Ruby, along. Both of them are also professionals in the off-road cycling scene, and they both happened to have a similar training plan ahead of Leadville.
So, we did what any competitors would do: We pushed each other in our intervals. Ruby put on some music from her phone, we said, “Ready, set, go,” and we chased each other up Missionary Ridge Road for 20 minutes. It was like being in “race” mode; hard, exhausting and definitely motivating!
After each interval, we spun back down to the bottom of the climb, sharing our feelings on the effort, agonizing over the moments when we each made each other hurt a little bit more. We also talked about all the other things beyond the intervals, like our boyfriends, our cookbook club meet-up and, yeah, a bit about the race coming up, too.
It’s training days like those, with best friends like Maude and Ruby, that show me that the community I have in my professional career is special. We kicked each other’s butts, pushed each other to be better and even though we are intense competitors on race day, every other moment is built around a friendship.
There are thousands of moments that happen throughout the season that are bigger than the solo endeavor of being a professional off-road cyclist. They are the moments that build confidence and community to do really hard things.
When we show up to the line to race in wild conditions for hundreds of miles, or fly across the ocean to test ourselves against the best in the world, we rely on those moments and, more importantly, those people to build us up for those challenges.
It’s when everyone is messaging each other the days before a race about equipment choices, or it’s in the minutes before the gun goes off when we all pass smiles and high-fives around saying “good luck.” It’s also the finish line hugs and the waiting for each of your friends to cross the line, no matter the placement, waiting to hear the story of how their day went.
All of those moments culminate into a friendship like no other, because at the end of the day, we want to kick each other’s butts in the race, and every other minute we are best of buddies.
Ellen Campbell was born and raised in Durango, and now races gravel and mountain bikes professionally, basing out of her hometown. When she’s not riding and racing, Campbell enjoys skiing, camping, running with her dog and baking with friends.
