Pedal down … Kirra Dyer goes for a practice session at Westgate Park. 57611 Picture: EMILY LANE
By Michael Esposito
FOR someone who moonlights as a mountain bike rider, Kirra Dyer’s achievements in the sport are particularly impressive.
Most mountain bike riding gets minimal coverage, struggles for sponsorship and has marginal prize-money on offer; but participants, Dyer included, are still willing to test the limits of their fitness, strength and courage to compete.
Dyer, a Year 5 teacher from West Footscray, is like 99 per cent of mountain bike riders in that she has to fit a taxing and time-consuming training and competition regime around full-time work commitments, and has even worked a second job just to be able to afford to maintain her bike and travel to major competitions.
She came to the sport via skiing. When she was living in Colorado and taking part in mogul and aerial competitions, she found out that mountain biking was huge in the mid-western state of America.
Recently, the 33-year-old finished second in the female pairs category of the Jeep 24-hour. The winning pair was iron woman Belinda Harrison and 24-hour solo world champion Jessica Douglas.
She also finished third at the Anglesea surf coast six-hour in October (again behind Douglas, and also finished third at the six-hour event in Beechworth.
“There’s the world champions and those kind of people who train full time, and there’s a few like me who have to have 9-5 jobs from Monday to Friday where we kind of do the best we can.
“It’s turning out pretty well at the moment so I think I’ll have to dedicate some more time to some more training in the future.”
Nevertheless, Dyer is making her mark on the mountain bike circuit.
“It felt pretty good coming second to that. These are people who fly all over the world doing this and there’s us who are kind of regular schmos with jobs and we love mountain biking.”
The Jeep 24-hour was a gruelling event in the Otways forest that, as the name suggested, started at noon on Saturday and ended at noon the following day. Riders could race by themselves or as part of a team. Dyer raced with fill-in partner Gemma Robinson (her usual partner is Amy Neville) and took it in turns racing two laps each, covering 200km all up.
“That way you had time to come in and clean your bike because it was ridiculously muddy, and re-lube your chain, and have a bit of a shower and put on some fresh clothes, and have some food and maybe grab a bit of a sleep if you were lucky as well, and then head back out again,” Dyer explained.
When she’s not competing, Dyer almost always does a mountain bike circuit every Saturday and Sundays, and rides her indoor training bike every weeknight, as well as doing core strengthening exercises such as Pilates and yoga.
She hasn’t counted out going pro either. The biggest obstacle to overcome is attracting sponsors.
“Sponsorship counts for a lot because if you’ve got sponsorship, even if you get sponsorship from a local bike shop who do all your repairs for free and that kind of stuff, it takes a lot of pressure off so you can do things like buy bike parts, instead of having to budget,” the Footscray City Primary School teacher said.
“I really think sponsorship can be the key to stepping it up to the next level. I’d like to get a lot better and train harder and get better results.”
“The racing scene’s really expanding in Victoria and in Australia at the moment so it’s been really good to be involved. At the moment I’m just kind of seeing how it’s going and it’s a fairly male-dominated sport so there’s a few women around at the top end, but not many of us underneath that.”
