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© Tom Moran
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Sara Ballantyne — Interview
Former Pro Mountain Bike Racer
Competitor, Team Vail
Tell me what came first, as a former pro mountain biker, was there a love of endurance racing or did mountain biking lead to endurance racing?
Definitely a love for adventure and I'm always up for a new adventure and after being focused on one sport for twelve years it's refreshing to get back into the other sports that I haven't had time to do, like rock climbing and horseback riding, all-day hikes in the mountains and learning to kayak. I love the training for adventure racing, but the sleep deprivation is definitely no fun.
You get to sleep when you're traveling, but you don't really get to sleep when you're adventure racing.
I'm wondering about your motivation to participate in Eco-Challenge. Is it a self-awareness thing, a betterment thing, is it winning or is it just kind of the love of doing it for yourself?
The motivation behind adventure racing for me is the thrill of a new adventure and being in a new place — experiencing different cultures and being in terrain that I've never been in before. That's really what motivates me more than any of those other things.
Was Eco-Challenge last year what you expected it to be?
We definitely were the greenhorn team of almost all the other teams there and I'm really proud of the fact that we finished. I think we had big goals just because each one of us is individually very competivive, but there's no replacement for experience and I think that it's pretty hard to expect a top-five finish when you haven't experienced a true adventure race like the Eco-Challenge before. It was very humbling, but I'm excited to get back at it again.
What was the most dramatic thing that occurred for you or for your team in Australia? Were there any scary moments, really high or really low?
There's stories of a lifetime that I'll have from Australia. You know, I think one of the — I don't know, I think it's a low but it was supposed to be a high — was when we had finished a day-and-a-half of hiking through the outback and all excited to get on the canoe leg and fully aware of the freshies that we were to anticipate on the Herbert River, but we thought, 'well, we'll just be floating down the river, we'll be able to sleep in the canoe.' So the real high point of being able to get some sleep, finally, was really exciting to us, but then when you see the red eyes along the banks and you pull off to the side of the bank and you try to try to get some sleep and you see the belly scrape marks of the alligators on the side it is a pretty scary experience. So the real high of wanting to get a good sleep and the real low of the wild animals that were all around us, plus how cold it was and we didn't learn the art of spooning until after that first night.
How do you think Morocco is going to be different and do you feel that it's going to be a good venue? What are your expectations for Eco-98 in Morocco?
I think it's going to be a very different venue area. One, you have a full-on mountain range there, the atlas mountains, that are going to have to be dealt with, whereas in Queensland, we just had one mountain, Bortal Frere to get up and over. And the vertical relief is much greater in the Atlas mountains. We're pretty excited about the legs that will be going through the mountains, of course, because that's where we're all from up here in Vail Colorado. So, that's going to be really different, and then as well as getting these news flashes or the news letters on a regular basis where they're just added a new leg called coasteering where we're going to be jumping off these cliffs and swimming around boulders and this and that. And the kayaking is going to be on a big pounding surf and the cliffs that line the shoreline. So, it's going to be pretty different but we expect to be competitive in Morocco and out team has more experience than last year and I think we learned a ton. We feel that we've assembled one of the best teams out there. Plus we're really like a family and the team cohesiveness of an Eco-Challenge or and adventure race is very important so I think that's a strong element for our team.
How much would you say, maybe percentage-wise, is the dependence on yourself and on your teammates, or can you not even separate the self from the team?
I don't think you can really separate it. You're only as strong as your weakest link and so it's really important for every member on the team to be helping the other person out whose having a particular problem at that particular moment. And I think people will find that everybody there on the team is probably going to experience a weak moment. So it's like you're really definitely joined at the hip for five to ten days and you can't really separate the self. I mean, you can do the most you can to prepare yourself, before the race with proper training, but once the race begins, it's really just a team unit.
Do you train together?
We do sometimes. I live over in Breckenridge so they're about 45 minutes away and everybody's busy with their own daily lives. But we try to get together at least once a week, and we try to do an overnight at least once a month.
What's the recovery time after a race like that?
You know how you seem to block out those really painful moments in your life. I was asked that question before and it seems like it was only four or five days maybe, but you know I was never... I'm sure like those top-end efforts, like if you were to go out and do a running race or a mountain biking race and really try to do well you probably wouldn't do so well. It's just a matter of getting out and hiking around I think the recovery is fairly quick, but if you wanted to do, again, a top-end, shorter kind of event, realistically, recovery time is more like a month.
What does it feel like when you cross the finish line?
It was certainly a huge feeling of relief when I crossed the finish line in Australia. We had bad feet problems from day two on through day eight. For me, the hardest thing was just dealing with the extremely slow pace that we had to do. So when I crossed that finish line, honestly, I kind of had a feeling of anger because I felt like I was really being held back everyday. But I know that if those were my feet — I know what those guys' feet looked like — and I'm sure I would have quit, but they were really feeling like they had a lot of people back home supporting us and there was no option in their minds of quitting, so it's pretty unbelievable. And of course now that it's done with, I certainly am glad we finished because there's a lot of high rates of failure, especially from first-time teams, so I'm pretty proud that we did finish. But my feeling was kind of of anger and certainly huge relief to be done with.
I hate to ask, but I wonder, do you think there's any advantages or disadvantages to women endurance racers?
No, not at all. I strongly feel that women and men are pretty equal in endurance-type events. I was initially going to be on Rebecca's team , which I guess is Team Rubicon, and I know those gals on that team and they have just a good a chance of winning as anybody else. I think the strength factor doesn't really come into play so much in adventure racing. It's more the adventure aspect and being able to push through hard moments and I think women typically have better communication skills — they're more open to what they're really truly feeling at that moment, and perhaps even more supportive of each other. So I think that an all-women's team can be just as strong as an all-men's team.
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