Regardless of who you are, starting something new can be intimidating. It can be especially intimidating if you are a woman dipping your toes into the male-dominated sport of mountain biking.

That isn’t to say that mountain biking isn’t female. Pull into any trailhead here in Bend, and you will encounter quite a few women hitting the trails. And, perhaps, if you were to chat with some of those women, they might tell you that their mountain biking journey began with Lindsey Richter and a Ladies AllRide clinic.

About Ladies AllRide

Although Richter had been involved in mountain biking for quite a while, her life as a mountain bike coach didn’t start until much later. It began when she volunteered for a mountain bike series that came through Bend in 2008 and 2009. This was the first time she heard about mountain bike-specific coaching.

Richter felt like she had found her calling. “I felt like it was what I was meant to do,” she explained. Pursuing coaching meant heading up to mountain bike Mecca, Whistler, B.C., in 2010 to officially obtain her mountain bike coach certification.

From there, she began coaching all over the country.

But, before that, she often felt alone in the mountain biking world. Mountain biking was much more male-dominated 20-plus years ago, and Richter was surrounded by many proficient male mountain bikers—professional mountain bikers. While they did their best to help her progress as a rider, some things were lost in translation.

“Nobody could articulate to me in any understandable detail what they were doing to be so good,” Richter said. “I would get advice—bless their hearts—like: ‘Your bike knows what to do,’ and ‘Just trust your bike.’”

While Richter connected with some of the advice that was given to her, she didn’t with other parts. She assumed many women might be in the same boat, especially those who lack the foundational skills many of the guys she was riding with did. She wanted to create a place where women could connect with those foundational skills and connect with the “why” behind those skills.

She wanted to create a place for more women to join the sport she loved.

“That was a big reason I started Ladies AllRide: There just weren’t many women in the sport,” Richter explained. “And there were no events centered around learning mountain biking.”

It’s About More Than Mountain Biking

With Richter and Ladies AllRide, mountain biking could be described as a means to an end. It is a tool that can teach us much more than where our feet should be positioned on a flat corner. Richter believes mountain biking can teach us a lot about life if we are just a little bit vulnerable.

Different adjectives can be used to describe mountain biking. Challenging. Dangerous. Scary. Many of these exact words are often appropriately used to describe our lives. For Richter, she hoped she could help women see the symmetry between their daily lives and the challenge of mountain biking.

“I hoped women would be attracted to the sport because they’ve got other women saying, ‘Yes, it can be scary, but when you learn how to do it, and you go through the process in a safe environment, you see that you’re capable of these things that you’re afraid of,” Richter said. “Then you go out onto the trail and apply them.”

If we try to do something hard, something that scares us, and we are successful, other difficult and scary things in life seem a bit smaller. Discussing that promotion and pay raise with your boss on Monday isn’t so daunting after staring down and smashing through a 10-foot rock roll just a day before.

Tackling life’s challenges isn’t the only thing Richter hopes participants might take away from a Ladies AllRide clinic. Richter hopes everyone leaves feeling connected to a new community. At the beginning of each clinic, Richter shares how women from her mountain bike community surrounded her during difficult times.

“[Participants] will connect with people they may have nothing in common with, except bikes,” Richter told me. “But a lot of times, that’s enough.”

AllRide Clinics

Ladies AllRide clinics are a whole weekend experience. While the actual mountain biking typically occurs on a Saturday and Sunday, the festivities start the evening before. Richter told me this usually occurs at the partnering bike shop or the hosting venue. For Bend clinics, that is Hutch’s and Seventh Mountain Resort.

This icebreaker evening allows participants to mingle with each other and the Ladies AllRide coaches. It’s meant to help ease butterflies and start building relationships. Oh, and have some cold beverages from two Ladies AllRide sponsors, Deschutes Brewery and Humm Kombucha. “it’s really fun to serve our local hometown beer at other places in the country,” Richter told me.

Saturday and Sunday are all about getting on mountain bikes, which can be rented from the Ladies AllRide demo fleet if needed. From there, participants are grouped based on self-reported skill level and paired with coaches. Each group has two coaches for seven participants.

Skills and drills are first practiced in the grass at Seventh Mountain Resort before groups take their talents to the nearby trails. When the women return from their afternoon trail rides, they have different education stations to participate in, such as basic bike maintenance and, of course, happy hour.

Ladies AllRide calls Bend home, but they have clinics nationwide and in Mexico. If you’re interested in joining a clinic, check out the 2024 Ladies AllRide calendar.

For connections and riding beyond a Ladies AllRide clinic, Bend does have a few female-focused rides. Dirt Divas, from Pine Mountain Sports, is one of the more notable groups and one that Richter and her crew have actually helped out with once or twice.

And if you loved your time at the Ladies AllRide and want to receive more coaching but would like to get your husband, boyfriend, male friend—you get the idea—involved, Grit Clinics is a great option.

“We’re just silly and goofy,” Richter told me. “We love bikes, and we love what bikes can do for our souls.”