“Asheville motorcycle racer Allie Warfel opens doors in a male-dominated sport”

Asheville motorcycle racer Allie Warfel opens doors in a male-dominated sport

Posted: 26 Dec 2010 09:50 AM PST

SHEVILLE – Allie Warfel is not without fear.

Fear always rides on the back of her racing motorcycle, its arms around her waist, whispering dangerous reminders of vulnerability in her ears as she takes turns at 80 mph.

But fear never takes the helm of her bike, the helm of her life. It never puts its hands over her bright blue eyes, blinding her, obscuring her goals. Her fear is a friendly fear. It's one that keeps her safe.

"The misconception is that I am fearless," said Warfel, 29, who just finished her debut WERA Motorcycle Roadracing Superbike season. "I am actually quite calculated and cautious."

Although Warfel races motorcycles at speeds exceeding 160 mph, flying around a track is just one of the risky elements of her new bid to launch a successful professional motorcycling racing career.

When she hopped on the motorcycle, she left behind a decadelong career in professional mountain biking, one that earned her 17 national medals. Warfel shifted gears because of a lifelong dream to race motorcycles, a much more expensive — and male-dominated — sport that she had never done before.

But those challenges were just minor bumps in the road for Warfel: In her first season in the men's open division as one of the few women competing in her division, Warfel earned seven podium finishes, two national Superbike trophies and a hold for second place ranking in the national points standing.

"The most appealing part of the motorcycle racing experience is the message that can be conveyed through what we are doing and overcoming," said Warfel, who also owns Biltmore Massage & Bodywork on Biltmore Avenue. "Essentially, we limit or enable ourselves by our minds, and if we train our minds in a certain way, we can achieve amazing things and overcome seemingly monumental obstacles."

It's a message she especially aims to impart to young women.

"Young women need to know what their opportunities are and that they should not be limited by the confining stereotypes of society," she said.

Growing up in the fields

Warfel grew up Mennonite in Lancaster, Pa., without any major female role models.

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Except maybe her gym teachers. Or the trailblazing women, the Amelia Earharts and the like, that she had to memorize for school.

Memorizing anything for school was a roadblock for Warfel, who struggled with severe dyslexia and learning disabilities. The only time she felt free from these challenges was when she was moving forward on two wheels.

Her first bicycle was so important to her she can remember her exact age when she learned to ride it: 5 years and 2 months.

"I felt a sense of freedom on the bicycle, especially coming out of a culture with a lot of structure and rules," she said. "On the bicycle, there was a sense of being free and a sense of being closer to myself."

Although Warfel took to the bicycle in a snap, she was a "pretty conservative" rider, she said. "I wanted to be fearless and courageous, but I had a lot of anxiety even just going over a curb for the first time."

But after she rolled over that first 8-inch curb with ease, fear introduced itself as an ally, becoming a constant companion as she developed as a talented rider. And in just four years, she was hopping up a fire escape on her mountain bicycle and flying off major ramps when no other girl at her mountain bike camp would even get close to the edge.

Defining discipline

Warfel also demonstrated very early on the kind of discipline that would earn her a spot on championship podiums and lead to operating her own successful business.

Her first bicycle was salvaged from a dumpster behind a local school, and she knew from her extensive consumption of professional bicycling magazines that she needed the right equipment to be a professional rider — and a lot of money to get it.

"I needed to use common sense with my goals," she said.

Starting at the age of 11, Warfel got a job picking berries and corn to save money for a $2,000 racing bicycle, sometimes making as little as $3 an hour. She worked before school. After school. And when she wasn't filling her basket with berries, she was in her backyard, using a digging iron for strength training or pedaling in jeans through pristine farm landscapes.

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And in just about three years, she had saved up enough to buy her first racing mountain bike.

Warfel still acts as if there are more than 24 hours in the day: She leaves her cabin at Lake Lure at 7:30 a.m., going straight to Starbucks to fuel up and network from her Droid phone before going to the massage studio where she gives treatments until about 7 or 8 p.m.

It's the same inspirations nudging her out of bed today that shook her 11-year-old self out from under her blankets before a still sleeping sun.

"My motivation is, and always has been, to overcome the seemingly mundane hand I was dealt, and now as an adult to inspire others to overcome challenges that seem beyond their reach," she said.

"It is this motivation that invigorates me to work long and laborious work hours at my massage business so that I can afford my own personal investment toward this cause … I was a Mennonite girl from a conservative family who envisioned a life far from the farm life and routine of the culture or expectations that surrounded me."

Eric Johnston, co-owner of Sportbike Track Gear and Knox Armor USA, sponsors Warfel's motorcycle racing team.

"I don't know how she does it," Johnston said of all her commitments. "She has so much energy."

"I think she will be a great role model," he added. "She's got a great personality and confidence." He's hoping that more women with follow Warfel into the sport.

"She is pretty unique," he said. "She is one of a handful of women on the professional side. In the pro ranks where you are earning money, it's very rare to see a woman racer."

Standing out

Warfel is used to standing out. In one of her first competitive road biking races, she tried to ride a mountain bike in a sea of competitors on appropriate road bikes. Her first season as a motorcycle racer, she rode a stock motorcycle — headlights, taillights and horn — past highly trained, seasoned racers on fully equipped race bikes. She was the only female mountain biker in residence at the United States Olympic Training Center in 2000.

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She caught the attention of the national Olympic team after winning two gold medals at a 1999 national bicycling championship in Cincinnati. She competed the year before — and was the 10th to cross the finish line.

In 1999, she didn't have the funding to get to the race. But Warfel has a history of making it work: She hitched a ride from Pennsylvania to the championship, but with nowhere to stay, slept behind a restaurant the night before the race.

On the final lap, "I followed that voice inside to start sprinting before the pack for the finish," she said. When she flew past the group, she thought maybe it was a fluke; maybe she had another lap to go?

But the cheers told her otherwise.

And the cheers kept coming. After a year at the training center, Warfel traveled through the asphalt arteries of the nation as part of the road race circuit for about three years. She survived the peaks and valleys of that lifestyle with just her bike and her Bible.

"I didn't have a permanent address," she said. "I would stay with race host families or at a teammate's place."

The mileage was adding up — and the mountains she'd been climbing seemed to be rising higher and higher into the skyline.

It was time to put on the brakes.

It was time to change directions.

A new start in the mountains

This new direction was south, straight to Asheville, in 2005. With a backpack of possessions, Warfel rode through pounding rain on her 259 Ninja motorcycle from Pennsylvania to WNC.

"My plan was to buy land and live a simple life," she said. "I felt very much in need of rest from the previous 10 years of hard work and training with professional bicycle racing, and I wanted a less stressful lifestyle … Asheville was an accepting town with good art, music, culture and world views. I saw this as a place where I could start my own business, feel a sense of community and hopefully retire."

She soon attended Center of Massage and Natural Health in Weaverville and started her business on Biltmore Avenue. Warfel still rode her mountain bike, but couldn't shake this sense of urgency to launch her motorcycling career.

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So she bought her first stock motorcycle and placed fourth in the Talladega 600 Solo, her first motorcycle race, in February. And the momentum only continued to build: She was leading the WERA National 600cc Novice class for second in Superbike, and third in Superstock (a class known as the "meatgrinders" for the aggressive competition of male competitors trying to earn their way to the pro ranks).

The strength of her first season has placed her ranking to the pro-am level, but the rise is has not been rapid enough for Warfel. "At 29, I need to make this ascent very quickly," she said. "I also don't have the funding to make the progression slowly as an amateur season costs more than $30,000.

"We need national interest and coverage in 2011 so we can continue with one of the fastest rises to the professional league, Warfel said.

It's her next stop on a long road she continues to construct with hard work, determination and a respect for the risks her fear emphasizes. But it's also a new road she ultimately doesn't want to travel on her own.

"I believe that we would have many more women achieving amazing athletic feats or pursuing physically challenging occupations if they knew that such careers could be an option," she said.

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