How mountain biking made a feminist.

I have been thinking about writing this post for a long time, however, due to the long string of uninterrupted "A Story A Day" stories, I was doubtful. I hadn't written anything personal that hadn't become "novelated" to say so, how was I supposed to write something that wasn't fiction? Yet, taking profit of quite a long bus ride (from Galway to Derry), and taking into account how women who identify themselves as feminists are threatened on a daily basis, I decided to write this. 

First things first, the title of this post is "How mountain biking made me a feminist", does it mean I was a mysoginist before? If you have answered to this question with a yes, I think you should turn off your computer and go out for a walk, fresh air is good for the brain. Of course, I believed in gender equality, however I wasn't as passionate as before. And, for those who think feminism is all about how female are better than men, it is not, it is about female empowerment, about how women have the same rights as men, about fair wadges, about not mocking women for doing things, about equality.

"Ok, yes, but what does mountain biking have to do in all this?" you might think. This is actually an excellent question. I took up mountain biking a little more than a year ago, because the summer was too warm and I couldn't go out running without dying from the heat. I had mountain biked before, when I was a teen with my family, however, after a fall I stopped and I thought I would never go back on the saddle (I also started using glasses and the small vision impairment made me feel scared on the bike). As I said I took up mountain biking and started enjoying it a lot, until I fell again and broke my left wrist. Yet, this time the hunger for riding stayed, and just before leaving for Mexico I was on the saddle again. When I came back from Mexico, if there was a thing I couldn't wait to do was getting back on my bike, it was a physical need. And during my outings with my father and my brother (and even alone), I realized something, there were barely any other women. 

Maybe you are lucky, and you live in a place where girls and women get on mountain bikes and cycle uphill or though the forest, and you don't understand why this shocked me. But after some days taking note of it, I saw a pattern, the few women I saw on a bike were mothers with their children that had gone for a stroll by the river. As soon as the terrain became more complicated, there were only men, young men, old men. Sometimes I crossed paths with groups of cyclists, from a sports club, and it was all men. Where were the women? One day, I saw it clear, there was a group of people having breakfast at a bar, there were at least twenty bikes leaning on a fence, there were both men and women, but only the men wore cycling outfits, and only them took the bikes and headed back home pedaling. Why no woman did? 

This question still haunts me. Aren't women interested in mountain biking? If so, why not? Do they think it is boring? Do they think they are not strong enough? Do they think it's not feminine or that it's a males sport? Are they afraid of joining a sports club? Of going alone for a ride? 

I think that women are as interested as men in being fit (or even more, thanks to the pressure of society for having a perfect body), however there is something preventing them to take up some sports, what exactly I don't know, what prevented me from taking up MTBiking was the fear of falling, but you need to overcome your fears in order to find what you love. This is my message to all the women who read this blog (if there's any), if you think you might like mountain biking, grab a bike and hit the trails, give it a shot. You are strong enough to do it. Just because most of MTBikers are men it doesn't mean there is no place for you. We are here to break boundaries. We are here to be free to do whatever we love, be it yoga or cycling. 

See you on the bike.