Ride Like a Girl | Lee Craigie | TEDxGlasgow

Jenny Jenny the SH, Jimmy and I first met on the Highland Trail 550 last year as a 550 mile mountain trail around the Scottish Highlands. The rules are simple, you can eat and sleep whenever you want, but the clock never stops. You have to follow this set route and you have to remain completely self-sufficient, which for me means carrying everything I need to eat and sleep along the way, but the story I want to share with you today is the story of how I run this race. It's the day after the Highland Trail 550 and I feel like I'm just walking out of a dream, a 4D adventure of moving through the most magical of dream worlds.

Without a doubt, this has changed me to move like this, to handle myself as this has taught me. more about me in four days than an entire elite racing race ever died and the thing is, it was easy not to push the pedals or carry my fully loaded bike call after call, of course that was hard, what was easy was the simplicity of doing and being because when the Ray simply becomes life and your only goal is to keep moving through it and things become very simple and peaceful nothing hurts nor does pain points really come and go like the weather at the end Since the weather is neither good nor bad, this was just a great bike

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.

I find it as a result of typing 550 miles in 4 days, 5 hours and 50 minutes. I have quite traded the 160 over Sembilan syndrome on that day 26 of my life for a 9:00 a.m. beginning there is no fanfare there is no beginning so someone just says let's go and we're fighting for the west island us 59 bearded guys and I raided for a hundred and thirty miles that first II until a moment in the late afternoon I look around and vaguely register that In a small group of guys I'm leading this crown at 1:00 a.m. I lie in a MIDI ditch and capture three hours of wonderful CD2 in a blur, a fast Landrover track and darkening skies until I reach the northernmost point of the Glengoolie route.

I look at the infamous viola in a bar and think I have to get my bike up, but I don't know if I can. I'm tired, I'm cold, I'm wet and scared. I think about the advice those mountain bike coaches would have given me in my professional racing days: they would have said: let go of something that scares you, attack it, claim it, conquer it. I don't want to, I just want a hug from my mother, etc. Instead, I conjure her in my mind and all the other amazing people I have in my life who would care about me and encourage me to reach the top of Bialik and together we will secure that place when I reach the top.

They reward me just a few feet away for a young deer, they sniff the air and slap all their ears together and then walk towards me. Now I don't know about you, but that's never happened to me before d3, it's 9:00 AM. m. and I've been writing for five hours now, my senses are so heightened by the isolation that the birds are deaf as if blood smells overwhelming. I have to resupply on food, so I dropped into ullapool and visited tactics if your senses are already heightened. I don't go to the testicles I grab what I need to survive on the bike and I leave with my pockets full of custard and sardines and I return to the mountain back to my safe place I

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another ten hours that day until fatigue overcomes me I fall Asleep on the bike and ended up in Heather now I know what you're thinking, you're thinking why didn't she go home and make herself a nice cup of tea, but the thing is, if I did, that cup of tea.

It would just make a nice cup of tea and I know that if I can get to the end of this shade, that cup of tea will taste sublime the next day. I literally crashed into the two leaders of the race. I turn a corner on the road and there they are. They are cursing, cursing and moving their bikes in the thick grass. Now I feel honored to be up there in the mix with these guys. They're a little confused that women are there to match their peace, but I deserve to be there covering the ground faster. than me, but my stops are more efficient, they are passing the challenge between food outlets, while with my high body fat percentage and female metabolism I can afford to browse a little more constantly, we are all stressed here, but we are managing that stress.

Otherwise, it seems to me as if the boys are fighting, conquering, striving to traverse this terrain, while I, in reality, am drawing strength from the environment through which I move and from the people I am gathering around me in my life. head. You can see that I'm competing in a feminine way, but maybe that's not entirely accurate because what happens next rewards us all for leading the runners ahead, we beat each other to get to the line first. goal. Ten miles unite me. from the end by two other guys and without saying a word we agreed that we are going to write this reason together and that's how the three of us ended up arguing about politics, religion, art, feminism, opening doors for each other and they line up through your breasts. cross the finish line together after four days, five hours and 50 minutes and share third place just a few hours, two hours, in fact, behind the main writers who, by the way, are curled up in the parking lot and are It occurs to me that very often we allow these characteristics to be overshadowed by force and aggression cooperation collaboration mutual care staying connected to each other in the environment we are teaching our children that to be successful they have to be infallible and show unbreakable strength and However, maybe there is a different way.

To win the race you will have to excuse Julie and I know we have to catch a flight to Canada this weekend where we will run 3,000 miles to the Mexican border. Wish us luck.