GO! Girls Outdoors

“The risk of injury is inherent in the sport of mountain biking, especially in the more extreme disciplines such as downhill biking. Injuries range from relatively minor wounds, such as cuts and abrasions from falls on gravel to serious injuries such as striking the head or spine on a boulder or tree.”…or so the all-knowing Wikipedia said when I consulted it regarding mountain biking.  Despite the fact I quite enjoy the sport, I’ve never quite come to terms with technical mountain biking, which I think is because I can never quite shake the image of myself lying, bloody and broken and partly wrapped around a tree on the side of a trail.  This type of mountain biking pessimism doesn’t affect Teresa Edgar, however, because she lists mountain biking as her top outdoor activity of choice, and has even started up a website about it, Mountain Biking Girl.  A keen rider and all round outdoors-woman from Vancouver Island (off the west coast of Canada), Teresa is very enthusiastic about getting more women involved in the sport - and of course, to get out riding as much as she can herself.

Teresa bought herself a mountain bike in 2002 after becoming bored with road cycling.  She dates her enthusiasm for the sport back to 1993 when she and a friend borrowed bikes and tried them out on a nearby nature trail.  Teresa says she was hooked right away, but that it took a few years of borrowing bikes before she committed to purchasing one of her own.  She got involved in local group rides, and now that she lives in the Comox Valley she has been working on raising her technical riding skills.  She says that when she made a permanent move to the island, the local riders took her on an initiation ride down a trail called “Bucket of Blood” - but despite the name and the difficulty of the trail, she has been riding more technical trails and pushing her limits ever since.

Teresa also likes downhill and backcountry skiing, hiking, rock climbing and kayaking.  She got a certificate in Coastal Adventure Tourist last year and spent her summer as a sea kayaking guide in Telegraph Cove, British Columbia.  When she’s not in the outdoors, Teresa is in the computer business, currently in the process of starting her own computer consulting company.

She says that although she doesn’t formally instruct mountain biking, she takes out lots of beginners and does her best to get them hooked.  She says that mountain biking is definitely a male dominated sport, but that she’s seeing a lot more females take it up - even though she only came across three other women out riding on a recent trip to the interior of British Columbia!  Teresa says that there’s a way to go with getting women into the sport, which is why she started up her mountain biking blog (you can also follow her on Twitter, @mtnbikinggirl). 

Teresa also says that riding with the men has helped her progress and become a better rider.  Even though she does go out with women riders, she still enjoys riding with the men and says it’s nice to have a balance.  She says that the women’s rides are just as technical, but that they don’t have that burning desire to try out the newest gap jump.  Teresa is always looking out for ways to make mountain biking more appealing to women, so if you have any ideas, please pass them on.

You can visit Teresa’s website here - or go to www.mtnbikinggirl.com.

If you liked this article, you might also like the articles about Thor Egerton (Mountain Bike Orienteering) and Amanda Koerber (Adventure Racing) on GO! Girls Outdoors.