Hello Parents, Campers, Former Campers and Friends,
We’re doing something a little new for Fairfax Cycling Camp this spring and sponsoring an event that MCBC is hosting. On Sunday, March 29th, we’ll meet our reigning mountain bike US XCO National Champion, Kelsey Urban, for a morning ride and early afternoon celebration of her successful 2025 season. Please join us to help celebrate an awesome member of our local cycling community. You can meet us in the morning for the ride or just swing by at 12:30 for an autograph.
As many of you know, before working full time with Mulholland Mountain Biking and Fairfax Cycling Camp, I worked at Sunshine Bikes. While working at Sunshine I always looked forward to helping Kelsey and her family. Her whole family rides bikes and they came into the shop frequently enough that I quickly started to consider them friends.
Kelsey started coming into Sunshine as a little kid tagging along with mom and dad. Before too long, her family was just as focussed on Kelsey’s and Cole’s bikes as mom and dad’s bikes. I loved hearing stories about family vacations, all riding bikes together or, later, exploring alpine villages in Europe with hard to pronounce names as their family scrambled to support Kelsey’s early international races. I really admired that Kelsey’s parents seemed focussed on supporting her rather than pushing her. They never talked about her someday winning a national title or other grand ambitions far into the future, it was always how they were trying to support her at the level she was right then and the future always seemed up to her.
For me, Kelsey’s story has two equally important sides. There’s the side of Kelsey pushing herself to improve and overcoming hurdles along the way and there is the side of a family, doing everything that they could to support their daughter as she pushed to become better and better at her sport. I always knew that everyone who gets to a national level has worked incredibly hard and overcome obstacles along the way. I’ve loved learning how much of a positive impact dedicated and supportive parents can make.
Elite cycling is a beautiful but painful and sometimes thankless sport to pursue. Let’s come together and change that. Let’s celebrate Kelsey and all of her family’s hard work that it took to get her to where she is now, winning national titles and representing Fairfax and Marin County on the world stage.
We hope that meeting and riding with Kelsey will help show all of our campers that with enough dedication, a lot of patience and a growth mindset they can get really good at the things that they are passionate about. They won’t all become national champions, but in the pursuit of excellence they will grow, make new friends and, if we're lucky, include us in their adventures along the way.
Here is a link with more information on the ride.
https://marinbike.org/event/hometown-hero-series-kelsey-urban-ride/
The event is free but please sign up early.
There are multiple beginner and intermediate level routes planned so everyone is welcome but younger riders should be accompanied by an adult.
Thanks for reading and we hope to see you on the 29th!
Emile