Personal History
I got a bit of a late start on motorcycles and started riding street bikes just after college. My first motorcycle was a 1997 CBR F3 sport bike. It didn't take long before I was hooked and owned a couple of more street bikes. Riding sport bikes led me to meet my husband, and that's when I started riding dirt bikes. My first dirt bike was a 2005 Honda CRF 250X and after a lot of trail riding, I used it to sample my first cross country race in 2008. I took 3rd in my class in that race and felt like I'd been run over by a freight train. Unfortunately, about a month later, my husband broke his back on his dirt bike and instead of starting racing, I took a little time off while he healed up. Even though my husband swore he was done with dirt bikes, I couldn't resist the urge to ride and started trail riding again with friends. In 2009 I decided to tackle a full season of our regional series Oklahoma Cross Country Racing Association. I started in the Womens Beginner class, but after a couple of races, I moved myself up to Womens Amateur. I went on to win the championship in my class that year. While I think that I have continued to improve as a rider year after year, that first year of racing was one that I was really proud of. It was an extremely rainy year and many of the races were completely muddy disasters. The ones in between were blistering hot. It was a grueling first season and, honestly, I said that after that it would be my first and last! I took most of 2010 off, but then came back at the end of the season and did a few races and joined our series as an Officer. Since then, I have raced regularly and finished with a season award each year until 2016 where I tore an ACL early in the season. I even experimented with quad racing for a couple of seasons and took the Quad Amateur championship away from a bunch of guys. ;) I've giving up quads and now look forward to riding my dirt bike in OCCRA cross country races and BJEC enduros in the 2017 season.