GIRL ON

Tara Llanes has spent the last decade building an impressive career in mountain biking, taking two national championships in 4x, gold, silver and bronze medals at the X Games and the 2006 US National Downhill Championship. The pursuit has left her bruised and bloodied at times, with injuries too numerous to count, but that's just part of the process if you want to make it to the podium -- something she first accomplished in 1994.

Where she is now is all the more impressive given she started her athletic career as a basketball player, and a good one at that, but after high school she sought a change and first turned to BMX racing, followed shortly by mountain bike racing -- a move that has paid off. Now as she has hit her stride in mountain biking, she looks back to the past and has taken up BMX again, hoping to qualify for the Olympics as the sport debuts in Beijing next year.

Even as she battles injuries on her quest for Olympic qualification, Llanes still plans to compete in a few mountain bike races this season, so she very well end up with another championship in mountain biking to go along with any Olympic qualifying she is able to secure.

If the competing wasn't enough, Llanes keeps busy between contests holding skills clinics for women riders, finishing one just last week in New York. Lat34 catches up with her as readies for her next BMX race in Victoria, BC, another important pre-Olympic event.

Lat34: So you wrote in your blog that you've been injured more in the last few months than you have in the last three years. Why do you think that is and what's your current status?

Tara: The status is I'm feeling better every day. As far as the injuries... Yeah it's fairly ridiculous the amount that I've been hurt lately. I think a lot has to do with a couple of things. The first is that I have been actively been pursuing for the last six months or so BMX. BMX is going to be a new sport in the Olympics next year. That's how I got started racing years ago and then I turned to mountain biking.

USA Cycling approached me and said "Now that it's an Olympic event do think you'd want to try and compete..." and I said no. They kept talking to me, talking to me, until I entered a race and got fourth with the fastest girls that were there. So that had me rethinking things.

With that said, racing BMX is completely different than racing mountain bikes. With mountain biking, it's a full suspension bike, so it has suspension in the front and the rear and you shift gears... everything's flexible on a mountain bike. You don't want a lot of moving -- you try to limit it as much as you can -- still it will flex. Whereas the BMX bike is not forgiving in any way shape or form. The bike is super stiff, it's smaller, the wheels are only 20" instead of 26" and basically it's really, really stiff...

A mountain bike is extremely forgiving... if you come up short on a jump, there's always something to save you. But in BMX if you come up short on a jump, it's going to be pretty tough to save it.

Between the fact that the bike is so much smaller and that I haven't ridden competitive BMX in seven years that's been a really difficult thing... It's been sort of a rude awakening.

Lat34: But you're enjoying the challenge?

Tara: I'm definitely enjoying it. I do not enjoy crashing whatsoever, and I don't enjoy being injured. But the challenge and when I am riding and feeling really good I think it's so much fun riding a BMX bike. I haven't done it in years. So that's been fantastic.

Lat34: So to make it to the Olympic team there's some sort of a qualifying series?

Tara: Exactly. It's a whole series of races. It's like a year and a half long process. There are certain races that you need to go to and sort of chase points.

Lat34: So where does that leave mountain biking

Tara: The mountain bike season starts pretty much in May-June and goes until mid-September. So they're sort of intertwined right now, which makes things a little bit tricky, simply because I've got to go to certain BMX races and they may well be on the same weekend as my mountain bike races.

Giant Bicycles is my bicycle sponsor so I talk to them about what races I'd like to do and they've been very lenient as far as letting me try and make the Olympic team. Right now the mountain bike races that I am doing are the Jeep series -- it's an invitation-only series. There are only three of them, so those are the three I'm concentrating on. I did one World Cup event a few weeks ago so I could at least qualify to be on the mountain bike world championship team.

Lat34: That keeps you busy.

Tara: I have my foot in a lot of different things this year. This year is a lot different than past years. The last ten years I've traveled so much that I kind of want a little bit of a break -- and I was like "Hey, what if I don't do as many mountain bike races, stay in the states a little but more, give BMX a try and make the Olympic team?" And I've also been doing a lot of clinics on bike skills. Last week I was in New York doing an all-girl demo camp.

Lat34: What do you do in a normal clinic?

Tara: You put on a Friday clinic and then a Saturday clinic and show the women different skills on their bike and how to do a lot of things they don't know how to do... a lot of things that I've learned throughout the years that are really helpful for the intermediate riders.

Lat34: What advice do you have for younger women who might be thinking about mountain biking? You started with basketball then made the move...

Tara: It's weird how I ended up in cycling. It seems to me like a lot of people that are into cycling are not so good at ball and stick sports. For me I got into it I think because I was really burned out on basketball and this whole team thing. I had been playing since I was in sixth grade and I guess felt like "I don't want this to be it." Granted, it would have been great to go to college and get a scholarship and have my school paid for....

For me, I felt like I wanted to explore. Personally I'm a very independent person and even though you’re on a team, it's individual. I'm not racing against any of my teammates.

I'm constantly trying to get more women into riding. It's hard. In my opinion you would think it'd be easier because it's a form of transportation. It's not like you need a mountain of snow to do it. If you have a bike, you can ride anywhere. I am sort of dumbfounded as to how many people don't have bikes and don't use it as a form of transportation.

I encourage anybody to go to their local bike shop to find out any information they can on trying to compete or just ride, ride on your local trails and see what you like to do because there are different forms of mountain biking.

The problem is people don't know enough about