*This post was written for Specialized. See the original post here.
Meet my new beauty - the Specialized Women’s Camber, but first let me give you a little back story as this was not an overnight decision.
Nearly a year ago I felt some major and loving peer pressure to get a mountain bike. Considering my first experience prior to that was awful, I wasn’t too keen on getting back on one, much less buying my own. Unfortunately I made the mistake of borrowing a bike much too big for me, slammed my lady bits on it within the first five minutes, and felt as if I was going to fall off at any point. Let’s just say I was not one with that bike and because of this experience I thought I hated mountain biking.
Sometime in the following year is when I joined an off-road cycling team (for CX) where the majority of those girls also love mountain biking. Lucky for me they gave me the itch to give it another try. After hearing I wanted to try MTB again, my friend Carol reached out to me and offered to let me borrow her bike and have a mini clinic with me as she was in the process of getting her certification to be an instructor. I took her up on it and wow, what a difference that made. When I met her at the trails she took the first 20 minutes or so to set up the bike to accommodate me. We went out and did a mix of riding and skill training where she would take video of me to better explain either what I was doing right or wrong. Long story short, this made a massive difference and I became hooked. I spent the next few months trying to educate myself on the various types of bikes and figure out (with the help of others) what would be the best bike for me.
Once I decided on the Camber I spent a solid few days visiting my local Specialized Dealers to try a few sizes and chat with them about sizing. Because they didn’t have the exact bike in stock, it took some side-by-side geometry comparing to really figure it out.
Fast forward to this week when the bike arrived and I rode it for the very first time. I LOVE IT. It was a process to get to this point, but completely worth it. I’ll be sharing my MTB adventures (the good and the hilariously bad - as I always do) in the next coming months!