My feelings are all over the place. One minute, I’m ready to compete and I want to win; the next minute, I’m wondering if my bike and I could fit under Phoebe’s desk in her office and I can just stay there for the day. Or call Tía Maria to take me with her so I can skip being around bikes altogether. But mostly, the excitement is starting to win out.
Phoebe triumphantly stalks behind the desk to let Matt know that we’re all okay with the category change. After she does that—poor Matt, I can see he’s smiling at her and nodding but she’s still glaring—she motions us over to the pump track.
“I thought we did this already,” Jen complains.
“That’s what I was saying to you guys before,” Phoebe says, only slightly impatiently. “It’s not about kind of nailing a move and moving on to something huge; it’s about doing the little stuff over and over until you can do it in your sleep.”
“But I can do it in my sleep. This is boring!” Jen whines. “What about the bigger pump track? When do we get on that?”
“Get around the track right now without a single pedal stroke and we’ll move on,” say Phoebe, unmoved by Jen’s pleas.
Jen swaggers over to the line, pulling her pink helmet off her bike’s handlebars and slipping it over her perfect braid carefully. “No problem,” she says, flicking her hair and looking confident—she’s got swagger, I’ll give her that.
She starts onto the loop by taking a few big pedal strokes so she drops in with good speed, but she has six bumps to roll over without any more pedaling allowed. One hump, and she’s over. Two, she makes it. When she clears the third, I’m starting to doubt whether Phoebe was right, but on the fourth, she wavers a bit, almost not making it down the other side. She rolls into the fifth bump…and rolls almost immediately backward and off the track, not having gained enough speed to go up and over.
For a second, Jen looks like she really wants to throw her bike—we know she’s done it before—but she pulls back a bit, smiles, and waves at us instead. She rolls back over to the starting ledge and just asks how she can get faster. Phoebe smiles and goes back to her explanation of how to use your body to pull up and push over to maximize speed on each bump of the track.
“Trust me,” she says. “When the bumps are ten feet high instead of two, you’re going to really, really want to make it over them every time. It’s one thing to roll backward or clip a pedal here—when you fall, it’s not a big deal. But when you’re on the big jumps, it’s going to hurt a lot more.” She gestures over to the room with the expert lines, where guys are hurtling through the air. “Those guys? They all practice here before they go out there, even if they’ve been riding for years. So let’s get started. Ten laps, everybody!”
Ali is the first to roll out, and I follow. Jen stays behind a minute and whispers something to Phoebe, and Phoebe squeezes her shoulder in response.
After what feels like five hundred trips around the small oval—I know it’s only ten, but it seems like so much more—my arms are getting sore. We take a water break, and while I’m digging in my backpack for my bottle, Dave rolls up and skids to a dramatic stop in front of me. He’s looking skater-boy cool in a flannel and skinny jeans, and a helmet covered in stickers.
But this time, I’m not nearly as intimidated as when I first bumped into him. Thanks to my shopping spree, I have on black leggings and a deep purple long-sleeved tunic top. It’s nothing fancy, but with my hair braided and a plain black helmet on, I think I look kind of like Catwoman on her day off.
“You were looking smooth on the pump track,” he says with a smile.
He saw me riding?! Since I’m messing around with my backpack, it’s easier to talk without looking directly at him. “Thanks,” I say. (Good start.) “Are you practicing anything cool?” (Yes! Full sentence!)
He launches into a description of one of the bigger jump lines. Even hearing him talking about it sounds terrifying, but without thinking, I blurt out that we all are still competing, even though there isn’t a girls’ category.
“That’s so rad!” he says enthusiastically. “And you’re going to do great.”
“Thanks, but I’m not sure it’s going to go so well,” I say. It’s so easy to be excited about it when Phoebe is giving us a motivational speech, but when I’m in my own head, it gets nerve-racking.
“Don’t worry about it. You’re not going to be doing the big lines unless you want to. Phoebe probably entered you in the beginner category. Right, Phoebe?” he shouts the last part as Phoebe happens to scoot by. She skids to the same super-cool stop as Dave and gives him a half hug, half shoulder squeeze.
“What are you guys talking about?” she asks innocently, but I know by her expression that she’s going to be interrogating me later.
We actually end up interrogating each other in the van as we’re leaving. (We would make an excellent dynamic duo fighting crime together. If we don’t end up talking over each other and completely ignoring the bad guy we’re trying to question.)
“What was it that Jen whispered to you before we started practicing again?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me.
“She apologized,” Phoebe says happily, and I’m pretty surprised.
“For what?” I ask.
“She’s been having a hard time ever since her parents made her stop racing….Apparently, she wasn’t having an easy time in school and she was pretty unhappy while she was racing—and really, really unhappy when she didn’t win. But that’s her story to tell.”
“No one likes to lose,” I point out. “And she told us that already.”
“Of course,” Phoebe says. “But there’s a difference between being bummed about losing for a few minutes and letting it control your life. A lot of kids get like that. They get into riding bikes, start racing a bit and having some good results, and completely forget about what makes riding fun. Competition is great, but it’s not the only thing there is to riding.”
“Then why do you care so much that there isn’t a spot for girls to compete in a couple of weeks?”
“That’s not about racing, exactly,” Phoebe hedges. “That’s about fairness and getting more girls into riding bikes in general. Like I said, a lot of kids are like Jen and really want to compete in something. Sports as a kid should be about fun. Do you remember that time your mom put you in soccer?”
“I hated it,” I say passionately. “I remember I cried before every practice.”
“Yeah, but you were stuck because your mom thought you needed to play a team sport to have fun outside. But I bet you were happier just running around outside pretending to be Batman and doing your own thing.”
She makes an excellent point. “That’s true,” I say.
“But a ton of those kids had a lot of fun on your soccer team,” she points out. “And the nice thing with these jump competitions is that it’s sort of the best of both worlds. It’s a competition, but at the end of the day, we all just want to hang out and ride bikes,” she says, before pausing and adding, “And, of course, it’s pretty sweet when you do win.”
Normally, this would be the point in a movie where a training montage happens. In reality, though, Phoebe has just been working us super hard at the park for the last ten days, and frankly, I haven’t had the time or energy to update my training log. Sorry!
I’ve since graduated from the kiddie line, done what feels like thousands of loops around the park, crashed so many times that, despite wearing pads, my knees and elbows feel permanently bruised, and cried at least once a day. I’ve been coming home completely exhausted, sore, and ready to fall into bed, but it doesn’t stop there.
Phoebe is a woman possessed. She’s made me start eating tons of healthier foods—even our pizzas are now covered with so many veggies that I can’t see the cheese, and it’s whole-grain crust instead of white. Yesterday and the day before, she made me drink a
protein shake after we finished training. And at night, instead of watching cartoons, we’ve been watching BMX videos.
And I kind of like it.
But if she asks, I’d never admit it. (I think she knows anyway.)
Superhero Tip: You are what you eat. And I miss being Doritos.
Getting tougher by the day,
Lindsay
(Not bad!)
CHAPTER 24
It’s early, as usual, since we have yet another practice to get to. I’m sitting at the table eating my yogurt and berries—another Phoebe mandate in her attempt to keep us all healthy and competition-ready. When we were at the park the other day, she handed all three of us a list with good foods we should be eating (vegetables, mostly), plus a bunch of notes about when we should be going to bed at night (early) and how many planks we should be doing every morning as our strength training (a lot). Lucky for Jen and Ali, they don’t live with her watching them like a hawk every day, pushing spinach-chicken rice bowls for every other meal and timing how long they can hold a plank. (I’m up to fifteen seconds.)
It’s exhausting—I thought being a bike rider meant just, you know, riding a bike, but I’m starting to see there’s a lot more to it than that.
While I’m trying to get through the last few bites of berries, Phoebe slides her phone over to me. “Hit play,” she says.
I press play. Loud rock music blares through the phone speakers. I bop along to the song, completely immersed.
“I used my band’s song,” she admits. It’s pretty catchy, I have to say. She’s never actually played any of her stuff for me before, but there’s a good beat, and I can hear her growly voice—the one I usually only hear before she’s had coffee in the morning—coming through.
“You guys sound awesome!” I say, but I’m more interested in the video she’s taken of Jen, Ali, and me. It shows us on our first day falling down and doing planks, then gradually getting smoother on the pump track. I see the time I refused to go down the jump line. It even shows me chatting with Dave a couple of times, at first looking super terrified but, by the end of the video, rolling past him and high-fiving as we ride in different directions.
As the music hits the chorus for the second time, I can really see the progress that we made once we started working on the jump lines. (Jump lines are straight lines of bumps similar to the ones on the pump track, but higher. The idea is to get some air as you go over them.) The pump track is like a warm-up loop for us now, even though even a few sessions ago, it seemed like it was the hardest thing in the world to get through.
And sure, we’re not soaring through the air, and I’m not doing backflips into a foam pit, but all three of us are getting a little bit of daylight under our wheels as we go up and over the jumps, and I can definitely tell that I’ve gotten a lot smoother just in the last week.
It hasn’t been that long, but the montage really shows me just how much has changed since Phoebe came into my life. Even my clothes in the first couple of clips are so different—I can’t believe what a change just dressing more “my style” has made for me! How did she know those videos from our first few sessions would come in handy? She must be kind of psychic.
Before I really think about it, I slide off my stool and run around to give her a hug. “I’m pretty proud of you, you know?” she says.
I nod.
“So…now you’re ready to go practice again?” she asks, and I roll my eyes as I head off to get changed. But there’s definitely a bit more spring in my step than I would have had before, and that song is totally stuck in my head.
Once I’m dressed and packed, I wander into Phoebe’s bedroom to check if she’s ready to go. While I wait for her to finish typing an email, I glance around. I’ve never really noticed how she decorated in here before.
“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at a picture on the wall, totally curious—and, I admit, trying to stall so we don’t have to go to practice quite yet. I’m excited but also a little nervous every time we go. Above Phoebe’s desk, she has a poster of a girl ripping over a track on a BMX bike, well ahead of the competition. A smaller poster next to it shows the same girl standing proudly on a podium, holding an Olympic gold medal. I didn’t even know BMX was in the Olympics!
“That’s Mariana Pajón Londoño, a Colombian BMXer,” Phoebe says.
“I didn’t realize there were any Latin American bike racers,” I admit. “I never heard of her.”
“She won two medals in the Rio Summer Olympics, and she’s known as the Queen of BMX,” Phoebe tells me. “I like having that poster up to remind me that there are Latin American female racers out there—and we’re adding more all the time,” she adds, nudging me.
I grin. “I’m going to read more about her,” I say.
“Of course you are,” Phoebe laughs. “Now, about that practice session…”
Right. We don’t just talk about cool riders, we are the cool riders! We pile into the van and head to Joyride.
When we get there, Ali and Jen are already eagerly waiting for us, helmets on, rolling around in the warm-up area. I think they just wanted to skip having to do planks again and they’re hoping having helmets already on will prevent Phoebe from torturing us. I know better.
I’m right, and of course, we start with planks. “You girls are going to thank me for this later,” Phoebe says cheerfully as she has us drop into that dreaded push-up position and hold it.
I don’t believe her.
Once we’re finally finished warming up, Phoebe tells us that today, we’re going to finally try out the jump line where the competition will be. It’s not that different from the pump track we’ve done most of our practicing on, but the long line of rollers goes straight, only banking at the far wall of the park. It ends there, and you ride down the flat lane on the side of it to start all over again. Every time I roll past it while we’re here, there are a few kids going over the jumps, smoothly flying into the air at the top and casually landing on the backside. And because there are five lanes, all with different height rollers, ranging from five feet all the way to fifteen feet high, there are usually enough people riding at once to make you dizzy just watching.
In a word, it’s terrifying. But it’s also going to be where we’ll need to ride in the competition. Phoebe leads us over to the platform where the drop-in for the lowest jump line is. For a minute, we just stand there, all staring at it.
“That’s not so scary,” Jen says. But I can see she’s gripping her bars a little bit tighter than normal.
Ali looks less scared. “These are like what we have in our backyard,” she admits, sounding relieved. “This is the highest we’ll have to do?”
Phoebe nods. “The height and rolling over them shouldn’t be a problem for any of you,” she says. “But we want to focus on getting your technique good enough that you’re actually getting a little bit of air and really pumping over each roller. Remember on the pump track, when each of you has almost fallen off because you’ve run out of speed? If that happens here, you’ll be okay, but you won’t make it too far in the competition.”
“I’ll go first,” Ali volunteers, pushing her bike to the top of the drop-in.
“Go for it,” Phoebe says, and Ali pushes off and down the steep ramp. She pedals a couple of times, and then she’s going up the first of the rollers. She clears it but doesn’t get up in the air at all.
“Push your arms down!” Phoebe shouts as Ali descends the back of the roller and heads toward the second. On the second one, she’s a little slower going up, but at the top she listens to Phoebe’s instructions and pushes her arms a bit forward and down on the bars, urging her weight toward the front of the bike.
“See how that helped her gather speed?” Phoebe asks us as we see Ali ride up the third roller more quickly.
“I can do that,” Jen says, looking
a bit more confident. I nod as well—it’s not that different from the pump track, really.
Ali almost loses momentum on the last roller but pedals once between her descent and the little climb and saves it. She turns around and rolls back to us, a bit more flushed and sweaty than when she started. “That was a good save,” Phoebe tells her. “But you’ll lose points for that in competition, so let’s keep working on that. And to get a bit more pop—maybe even some air—at the top of the rollers, you need to pull up on the bars and get weightless right at the top, and then immediately push down on the front end of the bike, like you’ve been doing. It sounds a little confusing, I know, but think of it like you’re trying to hop over the top of the roller instead of rolling over it or bouncing on top of it.”
“Pretend the middle of the roller is cut out, like a Batman-versus-Joker death trap,” I interject, and Phoebe laughs.
“Just like that,” she agrees.
I try it out, and it’s a lot harder than it looks. I don’t fall, though, and only pedal twice on my first try. Jen, surprisingly, struggles more than either of us. “Road racers don’t use their arms,” she informs us when we’re all back on the platform.
“That’s kind of true,” says Phoebe. “But we’re not on the road bike now. That’s why we’ve been doing things like planks, though, so your arms and core are strong enough for tricks like this.”
She demonstrates and makes getting into the air on each roller—and not pedaling through the jump line—look super easy. But she is sweaty when she rolls back to us, so it can’t be that easy for her.
By the time practice is officially over for the day, my arms are feeling exhausted. Phoebe calls that “pump,” where all the blood and lactic acid (whatever that is) pools in your arms and makes the muscles feel tired. But the three of us have managed to get through the line without any pedal strokes, and we’re even starting to make a little progress getting into the air.
Lindsay's Joyride Page 11
