Maybe Kelly Boniface’s younger competitors — the pro female mountain bike racers who aren’t juggling school-age children, a mortgage and a job — haven’t thought about it yet.
But when they hit 41 — Boniface’s current age — they’re going to think back and wonder how Boniface managed to perennially rank among Colorado’s top pro racers.
How good is she? So far this year, she’s consistently won the Steamboat Springs biweekly town challenge, placed second in the 111-kilometer Laramie Enduro (an event she won in 2010), third in the Firecracker 50, and second in the Riverside Rampage individual time trial. And the season isn’t over yet.
“I feel like the tide’s turning for older riders,” says Boniface, who lives in Steamboat Springs with her daughters Isabelle, 10, and Lila, 6, and her husband, Peter.
Rebecca Rusch, 43, won the Leadville 100 mountain bike race the past three years. This year, Gretchen Reeves, 39, placed second, less than four minutes behind Rusch’s time of 7 hours, 31 minutes and 46 seconds.
Mothers on the south side of 40 admire and envy such fellow athletes as 12-time Olympic swimming champion Dara Torres, who won the gold medal in the 100-meter race only 15 months after giving birth to her first child. Torres is now training for the London 2012 Olympics, when she will be 45.
“There is a history of women competing well into their 40s,” observed Charles Pelkey, a former VeloNews writer.
“Jeannie Longo will be 53 in October, and she just won another national time-trial title. I think women tend to hit their athletic peak at a different stage in life, and they also maintain it longer. I think that, really, women have a healthier attitude toward competition than the men do.”
Still, Boniface says that one of her chief motivations in deciding to move to the professional racing category was “because in pro, no one knows my age any more. In the pro category, we’re all in this together.”
Boniface began her athletic career as a high school student in Massachusetts, where she set several records as a runner. But after moving to Steamboat Springs, where she operates Backcountry Provisions with her husband, a stress fracture derailed her plans to run the Boston Marathon.
“So when I was told I couldn’t run, I’d just started getting into mountain biking, and it opened a whole new world for me,” she said.
She entered local races for fun, and found herself doing so well that her time often beat the professional racers. Race organizers started inviting her to notable competitions, but Boniface didn’t consider going pro until she competed in the 2008 Teva Games — and won.
“I thought, wow, I might be kinda good at this,” she said.
Boniface got her racing license in 2009. The Steamboat Springs-based custom bicycle manufacturer Moots approached Boniface to ask if she was interested in representing the company in its GrassMoots program. (Traditionally, athletes apply to potential sponsors.)
She does most of her serious training in the spring, when her daughters are in school, alternating between rides three to five hours long, and shorter workouts employing intervals.
“Once summer hits, I’m racing and recovering because most of the hard work is already done,” she says.
For the past three years, Boniface also has led a weekly cycling club for local girls, including her elder daughter, Isabelle.
Both girls have competed in the children’s division of the biweekly town challenge, but strictly on their own terms. At age 10, Isabelle is tall enough to inherit the Titus that her mother rode before signing on with Moots.
Next on Boniface’s racing agenda: The Park City Point To Point on Labor Day weekend, and then the U.S. marathon mountain bike national championships in Bend, Ore.
“I got on the podium last year — fifth at the marathon — and I’m hoping to move my way up a little higher this year,” she said.
