Saratoga Shredders - Girls Mountain Bike Club

By Anna Laloë

If you haven’t heard of us, you’ve been isolated from the world, and need to get out. Oh wait, that is the situation for ALL of us right now! All kidding aside, our group of girls on bikes has been a wonderful source of levity and excitement for over 100 families in the Saratoga area throughout the pandemic.

The Saratoga Shredders are an all-girls mountain bike group led entirely by volunteer female ride mentors. I started this group two years ago for purely selfish reasons to enable my own two daughters, Anne-Sophie and Zoe, now 10 and eight, to have other friends to ride with on trails. I made little business card-sized pieces of paper for them to distribute to their friends in school saying ‘We’re riding bikes in the Saratoga Spa State Park every Friday after school at 4pm, please join us!’ We had about 15-17 girls that would join us each week from spring through fall.

Fast forward to spring 2020, when Governor Cuomo issued guidelines for how to operate summer camps and sports during the pandemic. After consulting with the Saratoga County Dept. of Health, I decided it was time to start up again. Luckily, biking is one of those sports where social distance is inherent to the sport – as long as the girls are staying on the bikes, they are already at least a few feet apart!

Although we have 40-70 girls showing up for every ride, they’re never congregating in one space, and are split off into their small groups – pods of five to 10 riders. You can imagine with that number of kids and parents that we’ve had to be extremely vigilant. There is a roster distributed before each ride so that the girls know which of the six groups they’re assigned to, and we can keep exact tabs on who is in attendance at each practice. Upon arrival, they have their temperatures checked, parents sign a Covid attestation form declaring they do not have symptoms, and have not traveled to high-risk states. Mentors and kids wear masks and all are asked to stay ON their bikes at all times to naturally maintain social distance.

The attendance and support have been unprecedented. Along with the 40-70 girls that ride together each week, we’re supported by more than 20 volunteer female mentors, ride leaders, and general volunteers who enable us to maintain small group sizes – and allow for two female mentors per group. We meet two evenings per week at one of three rotating trail locations: Saratoga Spa State Park in Saratoga Springs, Luther Forest in Malta, and Kalabus Perry County Forest in Wilton. Each of these trail systems require a range of technical skills, as the terrain can vary from fairly flat with few rocks or roots in Spa Park, to hilly with many features such as log rolls, roots, skinny bridges in Kalabus Perry. We also ran two bike mechanic sessions (sponsored by Bikeatoga) and three skills sessions for the girls, and three ride and skills sessions for the mentors.

Most girls that start with us are ‘neighborhood riders’ – they are comfortable riding a bike on paved streets, but haven’t had much or any trail experience. We divide up the group by age and ability so all riders are comfortable. Before each ride the mentors do bike safety checks, provide trail etiquette guidelines, and some basic mountain bike handling tips. During the ride, the groups will stop and ‘session’ features, which could mean anything from learning how to roll over a log on the trail for the beginner riders, how to pedal up and down a small ‘gravity cavity,’ to bunny hopping and track stands for our more advanced riders. 

Our goal is simple: get more girls on bikes. As part of our diversity and inclusion initiative, we have bikes available for those that don’t have the means to buy one. Providing an opportunity and a platform for girls to feel empowered by riding their bikes in the woods with other girls has proved, time and time again this season, that confidence on the bike translates to confidence off the bike. The girls are proud to be part of this movement to get more girls on bikes, and their parents and other adults in the community have been incredibly supportive of this mission. A couple of dads asked if they could accompany their daughters early on in the season and I kindly declined. We are not anti-boys/dads, but we exist to provide a unique opportunity for girls in our community, and will remain as such. 

After a hugely successful summer and fall riding season, we’re transitioning into off-the-bike activities for these Shredders. We began our shoulder season sessions on November 2. This is a six-week, once per week series for Shredders aged seven to 12 to be exposed to skills and conversations that are inherent to and important in all sports: respect, team building, anti-bullying, balance, agility, strength and flexibility. 

These sessions are run in the Spa Park, and will mostly be conducted in the dark! Each child has a headlamp and we will set up stations in the pavilion areas and the woods where they learn the various facets of sport and sportsmanship. The theme is that small positive behaviors by many girls can make a BIG impact – we are helping to grow kind humans. In addition, we will be teaching a bit of outdoor science as we have mentors with PhDs in ornithology, botany and geology! Every session will start and end with a mini hike through the woods.

In the winter, we will do a webinar series where we will invite inspirational female adventurers every week to speak with the Shredders virtually – elite mountain bike racers, mountaineers, Ironman athletes, polar scientists and more. The girls will be able to chat with these inspiring role models and ask them questions about their adventures and their careers.

And in the spring, we will return to our focus of getting #moregirlsonbikes! If you’d like to find out more about our organization, or have a potential new Shredder in your family, visit: saratogashredders.com. Sponsors include Grey Ghost Bicycles, The Form Collaborative, Adirondack Multisport Club, Trek Bicycles of Saratoga, Bikeatoga, Capital Bike Racing Club, and Farmer’s Daughter Gravel Grinder.

Anna Laloë, PhD (annaelizabethlaloe@gmail.com) is proud mama to Shredders Anne-Sophie and Zoe, a polar geologist, environmental consultant, mountain bike racer for North American Velo, and founder/CEO of ecoFête and Saratoga Shredders.