‘No Woman Had Ever Finished What I Was Attempting’
Sonya LooneyUpdated Jul 01, 2020
Have you ever been afraid to take on a new challenge or experienced anxiety in the face of the unknown? Sonya Looney can sympathize. When she signed up for the highest mountain bike race in the world, she had to face deep-seated fears. Here’s what happened next.
The rickety bed creaked as I donned my headlamp at 3:30 a.m. on day nine of my 10-day mountain bike race across the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. My accommodation was a tiny, unheated room without electricity, situated at 15,000 ft. My bedside water bottle had frozen solid overnight. No woman had ever finished what I was attempting that March of 2012: the Himalayan Yak Attack, the highest mountain bike race in the world—topping out at 17,769 ft.
Sonya Looney
Stephanie MacDonald
Heidi Fritz, MA, ND
Carime Lane
Joshua Duvauchelle