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Professional Grade

By Beacon Staff

Layla Grant appeared in her first professional mountain bike race before she was even born.

In a two-day span, her mom, Rose, pedaled nearly 70 miles through a maze of mountainous terrain at the USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships. The premier competition in Sun Valley, Idaho drew the best riders in North America, including former Olympians and world champions. Seven weeks pregnant and a relatively new face on the professional circuit, Rose Grant placed 13th and 16th in separate races. A week later, at another elite event, the Missoula Pro XC, she finished sixth.

Today, the state’s fastest female on wheels no longer has a baby onboard and is easily recognizable among the best riders in America. The 31-year-old Kalispell resident is one of three women in Montana riding mountain bikes at the professional level, and she’s off to a blistering start this spring. In only two months of competition, Grant has placed high in a pair of U.S. Cup races, passed a former Olympian on the race course and earned sixth place at the fierce Sea Otter Classic in California, shedding nearly 15 minutes off her fastest times from a year ago.

Last week she won by 17 minutes at the Herron Hammer, Kalispell’s biggest annual race that covers 24 miles and 4,000 vertical feet of climbing. Her time put her in 8th overall among more than 80 experienced male competitors.

“It was fun. It’s nice to come out and race local,” she said, adding, “I like to get in there and try to beat up on the boys a little bit.”

The local victory was the latest example of her rapid rise in the pro ranks.

The average professional rider aims to improve 2-3 percent from year to year; Grant is already pushing 10 percent in the early season, according to her coach, Dustin Phillips.

“It’s incredible,” Phillips said. “We’re having to start over and redefine the limits for the level of intensity she can handle. Her improvement this year has been impressive and surprising.”

He added, “We’ve removed the ceiling. We’ll let her body define where she goes with it.”

If someone ran into Grant at the grocery store, they’d probably describe her the same way friends and colleagues do — unassuming, courteous, super sweet.

If someone saw her riding her road bike with a carriage attached three to four days a week, hauling little Layla around, they might assume she’s the average mom squeezing some fitness into her hectic schedule.

All of that would be true. Except Grant is far from average.

“There’s a switch. She doesn’t compete off the bike, but when she’s on the bike that switch goes on. It’s a quality that a lot of people don’t have,” Phillips said. “She has that fire.”

Her friend and teammate, Matt Butterfield, who races with Grant on the Sportsman and Ski Haus team, puts it another way.

“Her ability to suffer sets her apart. That and her determination,” Butterfield said. “I think she’s more driven than anyone I’ve ever met. That mixed with her natural ability is why she is so successful.”

Grant grew up in Darby with four brothers. One of those brothers was big into mountain bikes and that sparked his sister’s interest, too. She raced a little in high school and entered a few local races. To her surprise, she excelled right away. At Pensacola Christian College in Florida, she traded the sport for endurance running and then moved to Maine with her husband, Nelson. Then in 2007 the Grants moved to Kalispell and the two outdoor enthusiasts discovered the local treasure trove of rich opportunities.

Grant pulled out her mountain bike and hit the trails that snake through the mountains near town, including two havens, Lone Pine State Park and Herron Park. It sparked a fire that lay dormant since she was a teenager.

One day she was tearing through the forested trails at Lone Pine at the same time as Butterfield, who trailed her.

“I saw someone ahead of me on the trail and I thought, ‘I’ll catch this person pretty quickly,’” Butterfield recalled. “It never happened. I never caught her. I started to get frustrated the closer we got to the top and I still couldn’t catch her. I was flooring it. When we both finished, I was surprised it was a woman. And she was on a 10-year-old huge mountain bike.”

Butterfield asked Grant to join the Sportsman team, which included some of the state’s best riders, like Ben Parsons, Clint Muhlfeld and Joel Shehan.

“I thought she might be able to have a career in the sport. Now she’s taking guys down left and right,” Butterfield said.

In 2011, her first season racing for the Sportsman team, she went undefeated as a Category I, the highest level of amateur competition in the U.S., including picking up a pair of victories at the national championship competition. Grant turned pro the following year and picked up victories at several regional races.

Between the 2012 and 2013 seasons, Grant was pregnant and focused on not pushing herself too hard. Layla was born March 8, 2013. Seven weeks later, Rose was back on the bike, winning the two-hour Rocky Mountain Roubaix in Frenchtown.

Now, in her third year racing pro, Grant is driven to succeed even more while being an inspiration to other mothers. She has a blog — www.rose-grant.com — where she shares stories about juggling life’s pursuits. Instead of talking about how she’ll likely be a contender for the podium at the national championship event in Pennsylvania in July, her website is as unassuming as she is, and focused on more than the bike.

“Although races are fun and motivation for training, in the end results don’t matter; it is the big picture that counts,” she wrote. “Staying active and healthy and happy and passing that on to your kids is, I believe, one of the best gifts you can give them.”