Our friend Alexandera Houchin sent us over an exciting email yesterday, celebrating her making the cover of Freehub Magazine’s latest issue. Here’s Freehub’s description of this issue:

“An unprecedented number of people are riding mountain bikes as an outlet for exercise and exploration and, as a result, discovering a truth we all eventually come to know: Every ride is an adventure. Freehub’s 12.4 edition is a celebration of this truth and a meditation on how adventure leads to discovery, both of the outside world and within oneself. In our cover story, ultra-endurance racer Alexandera Houchin writes about how her relationship with the bike has instilled a deeper understanding of her identity as a Native woman—and how she’s come to realize the act of racing is a ceremonial expression of her Ojibwe spirit. Transformative adventure pervades this book, with feature stories on a life-changing family bikepacking journey in the Alaskan wilderness and the existential reckonings of a rider attempting to clear a long-neglected trail in central Nevada’s remote Toiyabe Range. Welcome to Issue 12.4—a tribute to self-discovery and embracing the unknown.”

Read on below for Alexandera’s thoughts on this experience…

I opened the attachment to an email from Brice at Freehub this morning to see a photo of me on the cover of their most recent print issue. I didn’t know I cared; I didn’t know it mattered.

I didn’t know that I was even going to be on the cover.

At face value, it’s just a bike magazine.

But it’s more than that because I’ve spent my life spanning through these bike magazines, journals, and articles to learn more about this community I belong to. There’s an overwhelming feeling, though, of still being misunderstood, of being invisible, of being romanticized and misquoted or taken out of context. I never thought a body that looked like mine would win anything. There’s this anger, resentment that fills me when people approach me to be in their videos or to write a profile piece about me. They are being compensated to tell my story, to profit from the content I provide them. I hustle, working 60+ hours a week to bring home an Americorps stipend, juggle a position at the university and keep my part-time gig at the bike shop as well as trying my best to stay fit so I can show up to the few races I care about. All in the interest of being able to afford to buy last-minute parts my sponsors can’t help with (because they live far away) to race my bike, have a place to live, and pay for food, gas, and the regular life stuff.

I’m trying to be true to myself because I know the ol’ GM (gichi manidoo) sees me at all times. It’s hard when there are so many “low-hanging fruits”. I sometimes want to say yes to a sweet deal, a job, an opportunity; in ten years when I look back at that choice, will I still be happy I said yes? When Freehub approached me to include a profile of me, I said sure, but that I had a different idea. I wanted to write it and tell my story as true as I know it to be. They were totally down, and I think the piece turned out awesome.

I just wanted to let you all know that being on the cover of a magazine I never imagine being on is a huge win for us; it’s a huge win for my vision of increasing the visibility of contemporary Indigenous people in the outdoors, of Indigenous people following their dreams, it’s a huge win for everyone who has helped me get to this point. It was fun to try to put into words the ways in which ultra-racing has revealed itself to be a ceremony for me. I’m Indigenizing spaces I was too scared to bring my Indigeneity into. More so now, than ever, I’m realizing that my bike self and Anishinaabe self aren’t two separate beings, but that I am both, in both worlds in all that I do, and they fit together perfectly. I hope you all get a chance to read the piece!

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We’d like to congratulate Alexandera on this momentous occasion and wish her tailwinds on her next race! Pick up this issue at Freehub and if you have a Freehub Subscription, read the full article at Freehub.