June 2012 ~ 9MB - Spokes Magazine

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Baltimore’s Marla Streb Downhill Racer & Bike Commuter by ron cassie Baltimore-born and raised Marla Streb didn’t get into serious mountain biking until the age of 28, but her timing proved just right. SPOKES: What was your athletic background? STREB: I did skateboard for about 10 years and played every kind of team sport. But what I decided when I was 25 was that I was going to make myself good. I wanted to try something and be the best in the world. I loved the exercise from bike commuting. I was this very rebellious person at the time. SPOKES: C’mon, you must have had some innate ability? STREB: Well, I’ve never looked at it this way — but what I did have was little regard for my body. I don’t know if you can call that a “talent.” SPOKES: You went to Loch Raven High School and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, both near great mountain biking at Loch Raven Reservoir and Patapsco State Park. STREB: Well, there were probably only a few trails back then. I didn’t start until 1991 or 1992. Really what happened was I thought I was HIV positive — I had an incorrect positive when I was working at Duke University. I quit my job and Mark, my husband, who was just a friend then — we both quit our jobs and took a year off. We bought a 1971 Volkswagen bus and drove across country. I thought it was a death sentence. But it was a mistake. [Later] At Scripps, I was actually doing AIDS research when I started mountain biking. SPOKES: What do you remember from your first race? STREB: I was kind of clueless. But there was a lot more money in mountain biking then and I liked it. I thought I’d become a cross-country champ. But you need a really good VO2 max, which is genetic. So I thought I’d go to downhill. I always liked to go fast. although she’d earned a masters degree in molecular biology, become a cytogeneticist, and was researching the AIDS virus, she decided to switch careers in the early-1990s after a move to California. Bicycling to work everyday and witnessing the explosion of mountain biking in the Golden State, she ultimately decided she wanted out of the lab and into the action. A late bloomer perhaps, Streb nonetheless embarked on one of the great mountain biking careers of all time. Among her accomplishments: she won nine National Off-Road Bicycle Association (NORBA) National Downhill titles, three Sea Otter Classic titles, a Winter X-Games championship, two U.S. National Downhill Championships and one U.S. National Super Downhill Championship. In 2003, after winning the U.S. National Downhill championship, and the World Cup in Austria, Streb published her first book, Downhill: The Life Story of a Gravity Goddess, and starred in the IMAX movie: Top Speed. She’s been on the cover of Outside magazine and has been profiled on NBC's Dateline and Today shows. At 46, Streb again is living in Baltimore. She and her husband, Mark, and their two young girls make their home in Fells Point. The Loch Raven High School and University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) grad works for Luna Women’s Professional Mountain Biking Team and also for Bike Maryland, where she serves as a coordinator of the state bicycling advocacy organization’s “Bike-Minded” program, educating students and adults about bicycling and bike commuting. Streb recently spoke with SPOKES about her career and her transition from downhill racing to bicycle commuter education and advocacy. SPOKES: When did you start mountain biking? STREB: I didn’t discover mountain biking until I was 25. I was a scientist at [San Diego-based} Scripps Laboratories, getting to work by bike, and I just kept taking a longer and longer route to work. This was around the time when mountain biking was exploding. SPOKES: And you discovered a latent talent for the sport? STREB: I wasn’t ever a talented athlete. I did have a kind of ability — but that was being persistent and stubborn. And I had a strong desire to get out of the lab. I needed an outlet. 6 June 2012
It was the 90s and everything was “extreme.” That’s where the X Games comes from. First, it was the Extreme Games. SPOKES: Do you mind if we ask how much you made in your heyday? STREB: I made six figures. My best year was $130,000, but I was also doing TV commercials. And the Internet was taking off and people would pay you $1,000 for a 200-word story. It was fun. We thought we were rock stars. SPOKES: You work for Bike Maryland now, which is an interesting transition. Mountain bikers aren’t necessarily bike commuters, city bike riders or bicycle infrastructure and legislation wonks, but you are. STREB: I never liked to drive. Still don’t. Part of it is I’m cheap (laughter) and don’t like spending money on gas. Bicycling should be a solution to not driving. That’s how I started [my career] really. I was going to school at UMBC in Catonsville and bike riding there from Federal Hill in Baltimore. SPOKES: And you were a bike messenger? STREB: For Magic Messenger in Baltimore. But I got hit too much and they fired me. SPOKES: Baltimore is at least a little friendlier today for bicyclists, right? STREB: Oh, there’s sharrows and signage and bike lanes. I love the signage and [North-South] Guilford Avenue is being made into a bike boulevard. It’s really a pretty flat city; even the climb up the hill to Johns Hopkins isn’t too bad. SPOKES: How is Bike Maryland’s ‘Bike-Minded’ program going? STREB: I’m the coordinator, along with Katie Gore, of Joe’s Bike Shop in Mount Washington, and it’s been very successful. It’s been going for eight months and the State Highway Administration already doumarla continued on p.8 June 2012 7
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June 2012 ~ 9MB - Spokes Magazine

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