As a group of four women mounted their bikes in Snowmass Village last Tuesday evening, Dana Dwyer worried she wouldn’t be able to keep up.
“I’ve been gone, so I’m not gonna be as fast as you guys,” she said. Her friend, Sara Shaw, wasn’t having it.
“You always say that, and then you kick butt somehow,” Shaw jeered. With that encouragement, Dwyer put her neon pink shoe to the pedal and launched up Wood Road to the trails.
For the better part of 15 years, the Girls Outside group has been a constant in many of these women’s lives — mountain biking in the summers and skinning in the winters.
“We were just so sick of riding with dudes,” co-founder Rachel Brenneman said.
Brenneman couldn’t make it out last week, but most Tuesdays, she’s leading the charge up the trails. The other members said she’s been the glue that’s kept the group going strong all these years.
“It's pretty incredible that it has lasted this long,” Brenneman said. “There's not pressure or intimidation or fear. There's just women coming together to share their love for being on bikes and being outside and being together.”
At 50, Brenneman is one of the group’s younger riders. Most are now in their mid-50s and 60s, but they have continued to push themselves, despite the increased risk of injury.
As women age, they often face physical challenges, from decreased bone density to menopause. Research from the University of Texas also shows women after age 62 are more isolated than men. Social exercise groups like Girls Outside could address all of these concerns.
Megan Hiles, a doctor at Aspen Valley Health who specializes in preventative medicine, said exercise like mountain biking can be helpful for managing menopause symptoms. She thinks that Girls Outside is the perfect recipe for longevity.
“In a group like this, what you're talking about is actually … multiplying all these benefits by engaging in physical activity, doing it in a group and being outdoors,” Hiles said.
Mountain biking can be dangerous; risk of injury — like breaking a bone in a crash — is heightened as women get older. But Hiles encourages people to keep up with exercise for as long as possible, even as they get older.
“If you look at the data, we would say that the benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks,” she said.
For some of the group’s members who are getting into their late 60s, some amount of slowdown is inevitable. They’ve become less competitive and don’t speed down trails in the pitch-black night as much as they used to.
“Mountain biking is a very challenging, physically aggressive sport that will, at some point, become uncomfortable or unattainable,” Brenneman admitted. But she said that’s not happening anytime soon for the bikers in this group.
“In this valley, you can defy age,” she said.
For some riders, cycling has gotten better with time. Ann Driggers said she’s a more confident rider now, and she’s going on a 360-mile bikepacking trip in September.
“When you're younger, you have silly thoughts in your head about your abilities,” she said. “Now I realize that just doesn't really matter anymore.”
When Kelleigh Condon first joined the group, she was intimidated by being one of the older members.
“I was like, ‘Oh man, I'm getting aged out,’” she said. But she’s actually gotten faster in the past few years, moving up to the middle of the pack during rides.
For her, the magic lies in the group’s “no one left behind” motto.
While many of the women in Girls Outside still bomb down trails — and some, like Shaw, still compete — the group has become more focused on the social benefits.
After each ride, they gather somewhereto tailgate. Last Tuesday, they set up in the back of a truck in Lot 6 in Snowmass Village. Driggers brought a camp stove and heated up some pulled pork in a pan for tacos.
As they ate their way through the spread, they laughed about memories made on the trails throughout the years.
“I always say ‘I would follow them anywhere,’ but I'm always so glad to see the car,” joked Mary Lyn Bondlow, a Girls Outside member who joined for the tailgate.
They also took time to catch up with each other’s personal lives.
“It's a place to just talk about things we're going through, whether it's family, friends, or just life in our bodies,” Shaw said. “Menopause, perimenopause, postmenopause.”
Shaw has been riding with the group for nearly a decade and regularly competes in Aspen Cycling Club’s mountain bike race series. She said coming to Girls Outside is always a highlight of her week.
“It probably feels a little harder every time, but yet, we're kind of all doing it together,” she said. “I feel like there's like this kind of magic that comes over and then gives you another push.”
As the sun set, the women packed up their food and said their goodbyes, but they were already scheming about next week’s ride.
“My Tuesday nights are pretty sacred,” Driggers said. “It's my time to run with the unicorns.”
Editor’s Note: Sara Shaw provides business support to Aspen Public Radio.
