5 Minutes Down
By Marla Streb
Mountain Biking Magazine - December 2003

   I am not supposed to be doing this. But I am trying my hardest anyway. My name is Marla Streb. I am 36 years old. I ran away from what I was supposed to do, so that I could do what I really wanted. I used to be a normal woman with a promising career as a research scientist, but a mountain biking bug bit me, and I changed.

   Who would have guessed?

   Riding a bike down a mountain should be so simple. Just let go and let gravity do its thing. Rip down mountains, in dirt and mud, through rocks and green trees at speeds up to 60-mph. Fly through the air. Bounce off boulders. Work around or through every obstacle to maintain control.

   Thick in the syrup now, my body quivers, moves slightly, before the last start beep becomes a noise. The forward momentum for a fraction of a second here, even before the race begines, could make all the difference later when the race is over. I'm standing on the pedals, balanced, in the starting gate. And though the starting sequence is governed by an electronic brain, I try my best to anticipate that fifth and final high-pitched tone, usually a G-sharp, that screams: Race! Static balance transforming into forward motion; I push down with my right pedal, and then my left, lumbering past the timing beam swinging each foot into a tight circle and churning my legs faster and faster, clicking through the gears of my bike's drivetrain. Upright, my legs pumping, pulling with all the strength of my arms on the handlebar. Compelling this nearly 45-lb bicycle down the hill as fast as I can make it.

   Just a few sounds are heard. Maybe my heart banging away inside my chest and the wind frantically swirling through the vents of my helmet. I can't hear the roar of the crowds if I am racing in Europe, or the silence of its absense if I am racing in the United States. The world slows down and I know the trail, often no wider than my shoulders, in front of me. Then I slip into a silence where there is no clanging chain slap or whirring drone of knobby tires.

   A typical downhill race lasts five minutes. This mental one, self-guided imagery, is just the beginning. I have spent the last ten yearsof my life preparing and training to transform these five-minute vignettes into a reality.

   From South Africa, Japan, Sweden, and Slovenia, to all over North America. I've circled for these five-minute spurts of adrenaline. I train year-round, three or four hours a day on my bike and more in the weight room, or on a motorcycle - trail running for endurance. Wood chopping and dirt digging a jump course in my backyard for upper body conditiong. Yoga for increased flexabilty and balance. Icy cold mornings. Swealtering hot afternoons. Hours of phone calls and e-mails to sponsors, race organizers, and training partners. I declare on my tax forms that my bikes are tools, the injuries are business expenses, and that my boyfrined, Marc, is a dependent. In reality, I'm the one who's dependent. I live for those sweet gravity-induced minutes.

   Until I started on this path I was lost. Riding a bike off this cliff, committing to this venture wholeheartedly, has made all the difference. Mountain biking saved me from the insanities of inane suburban life. It steered me aay from too much tequila. Mountain biking has transformed food into fuel, and compromise into opportunity. It's given me the resolve to ride out the ups and downs. Downhilling has left permanent marks on me, a few even the darkest panty hose can't hide. I now possess more confidence. I'm physically stronger than I ever thought I could be. And I've earned the adminration of my peers, even if they are just muddy, sweaty, rain-soaked, Lycra-clad bike geeks some of the time.

   Always, my eyes are around the next turn, on the other side of a jump. I am floating, like in those dreams where you can never run fast but merely hang in the air just above the earth. I almost have to fight to remain connected to the ground and if I'm not careful I could just slip away off into nowhere over the edge of a cliff. During a good race adrenaline masks the hurt in my thighs, the searing in my lungs. Not even the whack of a tree limb against my shoulder registers. no pain at all, not until a few moments later when the race is over and the adrenaline wears off.

   Within a minute or so of sprinting, my deep breaths can hardly suppy the muscles of my legs and arms and back with enough oxygen. I must race down this mountain through the boulder fields, jump over long-fallen logs, and drop off small cliffs, on the edge of blacking out.

   I launch myself off a berm and land in a bed of rocks 20-ft down the trail, upright and on course, still pedalling. During those few seconds when I am airborne, I ease up a bit, relax for a depp breath, and appreciate my delicate grip on life.

   Skintight and colorful, my form-fitting Kevlar or Lycra outfit makes me feel like a comic book superhero: My mission; to prove that girls love dirt!...by reaching the pinnacle of the podium while battling the evil forces of brake drag and off-chamber turns! Every time I hop on my mountain bike I am confident that I am making a small contribution toward making the whole world a better place, albeit indirectly.

   All the high-tech gear I wear inhibits free movement and restricts my ability to breathe. but the safety pads are so necessary, in case I slide out in a gravel-filled turn or misjudge the landing at the base of a 10-ft drop off, or worse. Protecting my eyes are the goggles that allow me to discern the invisible lines that I have scraped into this mountainside during the week's practice. Lines that I have carved deeper each night in my sleep. Ruts in the hardpacked dirt or sloppy mud that I must stick to like a train to its rails if I hope to win. I've drawn a map of this course during this weeks's practice, on and off braking points, turn to turn, drop off to jump, and noted where to change gears. I study the lines of this map at night and play them over and over in my head like a favorite Django Reinhardt guitar riff so that on race day I can hit every note. Focusing on these lines in that wink in and out of the blinding sun and through the black shade of trees and into the floating fog of trail dust, at 40-mph I race down this mountain trail that can break bones and ruin careers. I'm transported back to my mother's kitchen table, to the sound of her voice saying, "You are making a mistake tryiing to do this."

   My heart is beating almost 200 times a minute, trying to clear out the lactic acid, but the fascia sourrounding the swollen muscles of my forearms prevents the blood from exiting through the venous system back into my lungs to renew the cycle. As my arms lock up, the circulatory system breaks down. My forearms seize, my fingers claw up. The bike begine to feel like a powerful jackhammer, only I'm supposed to use this wildly-bucking tool to draw a delicate line down the mountainside with it.

   Sometimes when this happens my body just shuts down and then it only takes a small rock or divet in the trail to throw me off course. That's how alot of crashes during a race occur, becasue of a littel bobble.

   Sure I risk crashing. And sometimes I do, pretty badly. But I do not allow the fear of failure prevent me from trying. In the beginning friends and family told me that I was crazy. But I have learned that the limiting factors of my potential lie within my own head. True, I have banged my helmet-clad bucket a couple of times. but the rewards of being a gravity goddess are greater than being able to buy a home in the Bay Area, another home on the Central Coast, and a 50-ft sailboat.

   I see ahead the finish line, and as I shoot across it my gut clues me into how well I have done. I brake hard and slide-turn into a skidding stop so that I can look over my shoulder to see my time on the leader board.

   At the end of the race it's easy to pass out. Often I drop nearly 4000-ft in elevation in as many minutes without any sort of decompression chamber. My shoes are mechanically attached to the pedals and there have been races that I have cleared cleanly the whole way, no crashes, no dabs, not a foot touching the dirt once, only to end up beyond the finish line too weak and too dizzy to disengage my foor from the pedal. Slowly I lean over sideway and fall to the ground in front of the assembled crowds, and the media, and my competitors, like a burned up Wily E. Coyote on one of his zany Road Runner rocket-powered contraptions.

   That's what I want. To have the best finish I need to be lifeless, devoid of any soul, empty of any energy. I want it all spent on the mountain. I may have had a good run, but I have no idea how the other racers are doing. Would I be the fastest down the mountain? Was today someone else's race of their life? Would someone else be the goddess?

   My team manager will help me remove my helmet because my gloved fingers are too unresponsive still to do it myself. And then my manager will either slap me on the back or ask me if I am injured anywhere. A water bottle will appear from somewhere and stuffed into my hand. If needed a warm wet towel will wipe most of the race from my face while we all wait to see who the winner will be.

   Sometimes an official will notify me with a coy whisper or a firm clipboard in the small of my back that I have been selected for the testing of performance enhancing drugs, and the official will walk beside me as I make my way either to the luxuriously appointed VIP lounge or to a hastily put together and grimy first-aid station where I can provide a urine sample in semiprivacy.

   And it's my job, especially after the race standing on top of the podium, to smile and look professional. It's this part of the dream job that affords me the luxury of riding my bike in the woods on sunny midafternoons in vacation destinations all over the world during the week. It's what I have been doing now for almost ten years. It's what led me from a precarious state of mind to where I am now: Preparing for another race season. Imagining tomorrow morning's race.