Friday, January 4, 2008

Lessons learned from the saddle

Ketchum woman joins professional mountain bike team as masseuse


By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Ketchum resident Deirdre ?Dee? O?Connell is a backcountry guide turned professional mountain-bike masseuse. She says there is much people can learn about themselves from the goals they set and things they achieve. Photo by David N. Seelig

Deirdre O'Connell didn't learn to cheer until the age of 44.

O'Connell, now 45, has been a transient Ketchum resident for 12 years, and the story of her adult life weaves through the outdoors and abundant backcountry of the West, much of it from the saddle of a mountain bike.

In 2006, O'Connell, who goes by Dee, joined the Subaru-Gary Fisher Mountain Bike Team as an athlete "soigner," a French term for a team massage therapist. That's when she started to learn how to cheer for athletes on her team.

"Cheering came with difficulty," she said. "If you're not used to cheering, you're actually embarrassed. Can you use other people's material? Or do you come up with your own? But, really, it's all been done before."

She said cheering was as difficult for her as dancing is for others.

"It's not like you have to cheer, but part of me wants to cheer," she said.

Working for Gary Fischer-Subaru is something of a second career for O'Connell, who worked for the previous 15 years as a guide for Outward Bound and for Western Spirit, a mountain bike touring company.

She said there's a term she picked up during her years as a guide that applies to how challenging outdoor activities can apply to people's lives. The word is transference.

"The idea isn't that people are going to become mountain climbers or river runners, but that they can learn new things and succeed at new things," she said. "They can take that and apply it to their lives.

"It's just like taking risks in life. Is it really scary, or does it just seem like it's going to be scary?"

O'Connell said the time she spent guiding people through the backcountry has been rewarding, and it was guiding that first brought her to the Wood River Valley, working for Western Spirit, in summer 1995.

"When I first came, the owner of the company said the biking is absolutely incredible here. And then I got here, and I was kind of like, 'huh?' It looks kind of bleak when you drive in from the south.

"But it's spectacular in a subtle way, very different from the Colorado Rockies, for example."

The Wood River Valley and Central Idaho's abundant trails quickly crawled beneath her skin, and mountain biking continues to be a passion.

"I feel lucky to be working my passion," she said. "But I just definitely love bike riding, and it's been a part of my life for a long time. I like the exercise part of it. I like the exploring part of it. I like the being-outside part of it, the social part of it."

O'Connell said she has dabbled in numerous outdoor sports, but she's found the right mix of challenge and comfort on a mountain bike. It's a tool fit for teaching oneself to push a little farther, a little further, a little harder.

"After guiding people for so many years I discovered that if people aren't used to pushing themselves, well they can always do more than they think they can. That's one of the things biking has showed me: Don't limit yourself."

After 15 years of working as a guide, O'Connell attended massage school to, as she put it, "try something different." And as with all life decisions, that path led to unexpected destinations. In 2006, after O'Connell spent a year working illegally in Mexico, a friend with whom she'd attended massage school called to say she was resigning her position as soigner with the Subaru-Gary Fisher Mountain Bike Team.

At least half her year is now spent touring the National Mountain Bike Series and World Cup mountain bike races. And that means travel to far-away places.

"This year we're going to Andorra," she said. "Last year I was in Slovenia. I mean, those aren't places I ever thought I'd go."

And the positive experience doesn't stop there.

"I like to travel, but I have also learned to like sports. I just love cycling."

Another eye-opener gleaned from the world of professional mountain bike racing was the striking difference between the U.S. and European fans. While a maximum of a few thousand might attend a race in the United States, European races are swarmed with 30,000 or more spectators.

"They come. They buy beer. They walk the course. They cheer. They sit in the beer tent and eat their knockworst. They love cycling. It's really a different sport over there, and it's very well supported. They'll be out in the pouring rain. It seems like it always rains at those races."

Now this woman who lived out of a river bag and suitcase for much of her adult life is looking forward to the coming season, which will include a National Mountain Bike Series-sanctioned race at Tamarack Resort near Cascade, Idaho, in August.

And on top of it all it's true, she said. It's true that all of life's experiences make us who we are.

Even cheering.

"I felt embarrassed at first because it wasn't something I did, and then I felt silly about being embarrassed. But it made me feel more confident. I come across as really confident, but I don't think anybody is really as confident as they appear. So that's it. Cheering helped make me more confident."

And that, as the guides say, is transference.




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