A Little About Me
For a long time my compass was downhill racing. I love competing against myself, love the focus of repeating the same trail until I find every second. But getting into racing as an adult woman in the US is its own kind of obstacle. Women-only race days help, but they don't solve the core problem, which is that practice rarely is. You're learning a new course while faster, more experienced riders are flying past you. It's a hard place to grow, and for a long time it made me feel like there just wasn't a space for me.
So I stopped waiting for a pathway that wasn't being built and started making my own.
That meant showing up anyway. Riding for myself. Building community around group rides where nobody gets left behind and nobody gets shamed for where they're starting from. It meant being honest online about what this sport actually looks like when you're not on the podium. And it meant writing the cookbook I wished had existed when I was starting out.
Cooking Up Loam came from realizing nobody was writing about nutrition for cyclists in a way that actually made sense. Not blanketed statements, not information buried under jargon, not content written exclusively for elite athletes. Just honest, practical guidance for anyone who rides a bike and wants to understand how to fuel their body properly. Whether you just got into the sport or you've been riding for years and want to dial things in, it's the book I wished had existed when I was trying to figure all of this out.
I'm Freya. I ride trails in Bellingham with my husband Spencer and our dogs. I share the honest version of what this sport looks like, the progress, the setbacks, the joy of finding a trail that finally clicks. Welcome to my little corner of it.
I didn't grow up in a biking family. There was no dad loading bikes onto a rack on weekends, no older sibling showing me the trails. I came to mountain biking the way a lot of us do; sideways, late, and a little unsure I was supposed to be there at all.
It was Spencer who handed me the sport. We'd been friends for years before we started dating, and once we were together he took me out on my first real ride. I hated it. He'd taken me on an XC climb through the hills and I had zero cycling fitness. I was fit in other ways, but mountain biking has its own language and my body didn't speak it yet. What kept me going wasn't the ride. It was him. He never once made me feel slow or embarrassed. I'd be sitting back on my seat, feet barely on the pedals, creeping down roots, and he'd just cheer when I tried something. That's rarer than it sounds. A lot of people want the end result without sitting with you in the in-between. Spencer sat with me there, and I'll never forget that.
Once he showed me a taste of downhill, it was over. Before long I was biking more than him.
We moved to Bellingham chasing that feeling. Spencer had passed through as a kid on the way to Whistler and always remembered it. We visited for a week, fell completely in love, and within a month we'd packed everything and moved. The trails, the mountains, Canada right there. Whistler, Squamish, so much within reach. This was the place to find out what a mountain bike could do for me, and what I could do on one.
What I found was a sport I loved deeply and a community I sometimes struggled to find my place in. When you come to mountain biking as an adult you're watching people like Jackson Goldstone, who was on a balance bike at three years old, or Casey Brown, Tahnee Seagrave, Vali Höll, Rachel Atherton, Finn Iles. Riders who grew up with this sport in their bones. And you start to wonder if there's a path for someone who arrived late, without that foundation, without the family history. I felt like I'd already aged out at 18. There are so many doors that open early in this sport and quietly close before most people even know they existed.