Our buddy Alexandera Houchin is now riding for Esker Cycles. Read on for the full announcement and a quote from Alexandera!
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Alexandera Houchin’s Ultra Racing Hacks
If you follow ultra racing, then you have most likely heard of Alexandera Houchin. Today we’re sharing a few hacks she’s tried over the year, from her beginning roots bike touring all the way through bikepacking races. Read on for a bit of self-deprecating humble pie and innovation, rolled in one!
Radar
Alexandera Houchin Has Left Chumba Cycles
Our good friend Alexandera Houchin has parted ways with Austin, TX framebuilders Chumba Cycles after five years of being a sponsored athlete, as announced on the brand’s Instagram. We’re not at liberty to talk about her new sponsor quite yet but wanted to alert the readership and direct them to Chumba Cycles’ Instagram for a heartfelt photo collage and official statement.
You can also read Alexandera’s extended thoughts by subscribing to her Substack.
Check out John and Alexandera’s Chumba Beautiful Bicycles gallery in our archives:
Waaseyaa: It is Bright; Alexandera Houchin, Her Life, and Her Chumba Cycles Stella MTB
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Radar Roundup: Don’t Miss the Velo Cosmos Show, Caletti Photo Show, Fish Ski 6-Pack, High Above Dyneema Hip Pack, Bullitt and Cinelli, Fat Tire and Dangle Supply, Trackers!, Bike Story Night with Alexandra Houchin, PEdALED Jary Collection 23, and Rémy Métailler Rides Portal
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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Radar Roundup: Globe Haul LT, Wolf Tooth Morse Cargo Cage, Otso Arctodus New Paint, Jones Schrader Valve Stems, CdC Solenne Hoodie, Alexandera’s 2023 Colorado Trail Race, The Meeting, and NRW Cross-Cup
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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Alexandera Houchin Reflects on the 2023 Tour Divide
It’s Monday. While you’re sitting at your computer, hit play on this video from Chumba Cycles on Alexandera Houchin‘s 2023 record-setting run!
Reportage
Gagwejikanidiwag: They Race Each Other – Alexandera Houchin and Her Arizona Trail 300 ITT Experience
For the third year in a row, I invited a small group of friends to race me on the southern 300 miles of the Arizona Trail. I ultimately challenge people to ride the route southbound and descend the trail on Mount Lemmon; why else would there be an AZT 300 if not to ride all the magnificent trail between Superior, AZ and Mexico?
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Freehub Magazine: Stronger Together Identity and Endurance with Alexandera Houchin
It has taken time for Alexandera Houchin to weave layers of her identity together. First and foremost, Alexandera is an Ojibwe woman. She’s also an artist, a farmer, a mechanic, a cyclist and a person who cares deeply about her community on the Fond Du Lac reservation near Cloquet, Minnesota. “Stronger Together” takes an intimate look into Alexandera’s life while examining concepts of identity, forgiveness and what it means to merge seemingly different aspects of your soul in order to continue moving forward, one pedal stroke at a time.
See more at Freehub!
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Radar Roundup: It’s a SAS Summer, Bikes^3, Water Cycle, and Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
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Radar Roundup: ATB Challenge 01, Tumbleweed Goods, ORNOT Jerseys, Paris Gao-Dakar VTT, and Is Riding Giving You Pain?
Our Radar Roundup compiles products and videos from the ‘net in an easy-to-digest format. Read on below for today’s findings…
Reportage
Waaseyaa: It is Bright – Alexandera Houchin, Her Life, and Her Chumba Cycles Stella MTB
Waaseyaa: it is bright, is light (as in the day), is radiant; it is sunny
It’s been a hard couple of years. Compounded self-doubt, emotional and physical abuse and income insecurity had me clinging to any bit of life I had within myself. I hadn’t really comprehended how I had gotten in that position in the first place. I remember years ago talking to someone who confided in me that she was in an abusive relationship. I’d been stone-cold in clarity when I told her to leave the fucker. She revealed that it was more complicated than that and, at that moment, I pitied her. Years later, I found myself in the same predicament; I was ashamed both for the lack of strength I had to leave my boyfriend and for my inability to listen to her. I’ve spent the last two years feeling like a swollen shell of myself.
Radar
Alexandera Houchin Reflects on Her Cover Photo in Freehub Magazine
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…
Reportage
Alexandera Houchin’s New Custom Chumba Sendero Titanium and Terlingua Titanium Bikes
Chumba Cycles has been supporting ultra-endurance and all-around badass athlete Alexandera Houchin for some time now, outfitting her with a variety of bikes for her endeavors. Yet with the announcement of Chumba’s in-house titanium manufacturing earlier this year, Mark and Vince, the owners of Chumba, wanted to get Alexandera on some new frames. You might recall our coverage of the Sendero Titanium from this year’s ENVE Builder Round Up. After the show, I reached out to Chumba to see if they’d share some photos of Alexandera’s new bikes, so let’s check them out below…
Reportage
Zhaawani-noodin: There is a South Wind – a Response to the Name “Dirty Kanza”
I can tell you one thing; whenever someone tells me what I should do, I almost always do the opposite. I have been that way for as long as I can remember. In some psychology class years back, I learned about the theory of psychological reactance. It all boils down to an idea that people believe that they possess freedoms and the ability to participate in those free-behaviors. When those behaviors are threatened, something within us is sparked and we react. I find myself pretty apprehensive when it comes to telling anyone what they should be doing. For that matter, I mostly, don’t care what anyone else is doing. A person’s true character comes out regardless. You are what you do.
Radar
Alexandera Houchin in Bicycling Magazine
“When I cross the line, people seem stunned”.
“The sun is beating down from a relentlessly blue sky on an 80-degree late-May afternoon in Emporia, Kansas. Alexandera Houchin is joking with her friends and supporters at the starting line of the Dirty Kanza XL, despite the fact that she’s just ridden her bike a few hundred miles through rain and mud from Iowa, napping under a highway overpass to get here on time. The laughter masks her misgivings about this race. It’s not because the DKXL is a notoriously difficult 542km ride through the steep and sharp Flint Hills of Kansas. It’s the race’s name, “Dirty Kanza,” that gets her. Kanza is a nickname for the Kaw Nation, the “People of the South Wind,” who lived in this region long before white settlers arrived. To preface that with “Dirty” shows a disconnect of the history of place that is ironic to Houchin, whose mother is Ojibwe.”
Check out more at Bicycling Magazine!
Radar
Where the Water Ends: a Video Profile on Alexandera Houchin
The University of Minnesota – Duluth has pulled together an exceptional profile video on Alexandera Houchin, the SS TDR record holder. Check it out!
“After living thousands of miles away and spending time zig-zagging down the Continental Divide on bike, Alexandera Houchin’s homecoming is extra meaningful. Growing up, she never saw a Native American dentist or doctor, and decided to counter that with plans to practice dentistry on her reservation. Through her example, Alexandera envisions empowering the next generation to take care of its citizens. “If you can’t see it, how can you believe it?””
