Video: Part of Me - Finding strength in community and discovering your Something - Mountain Bike Blog Post

“We all have Something,” says Stephanie Dupont.

What that Something is – an obsession, a challenge, a passion, an affliction – is ours to discover.

Growing up on Montreal’s South Shore, Steph’s first Something was her connection to mountains.

Looking across the St. Lawrence at Montreal’s iconic skyline draped over its Mount Royal backdrop to the north, and south to the Montérégie, the potential of what lies beyond the city has always captured her imagination.

After completing her Industrial Engineering degree nestled into the side of one of those very peaks at the Polytechnique Montréal, she finally succumbed to the call of the west. Landing a job in Vancouver, she could finally live among the Coast Mountain peaks that her father had been romanticizing her whole life.

Within a few weeks of arriving, on the advice of a new-found work friend, she tried mountain biking for the first time.

“I went onto the Pinkbike classifieds and found my first bike – a Norco Six – and it changed my life forever,” she said.

Her connection to the sport was strengthened even further after she discovered the Muddbunnies Riding Club – a supportive Vancouver-based community of riding women with local chapters across North America.

Basking in her new-found community, and her new Something, she wasn’t prepared for when Something Unexpected abruptly found her.

“I was in the best shape of my life – but, about a year into mountain biking, I realized my level of energy wasn’t as good as usual, and, very rapidly, my health degraded. I didn’t want to go to the hospital, but I couldn’t walk anymore, so I had to go.”

Over the ensuing five days, Steph was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease - an autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation in the GI tract and impedes the body ability to absorb nutrients – and hers was severe. She dropped 15 pounds in 120 hours.

“It happened so quickly – I remember being at the hospital, full of Morphine, and the doctors are lining up telling me I have a lifelong autoimmune disease and it’s chronic.”

She just lay there in stunned silence. Her future forever altered. How could this infinitely positive, active soul scale this seeming impassible peak; the lifelong reality of a disease with no known cause and no known cure standing between her and her sense of self?

“When I went home, it took a couple of weeks with a cane. I remember after about a month in, my goal was to walk to the corner of the street – which is just three houses – and come back. That was the goal of the day.”

She confronted it the only way she knew how – with mindful positivity and surrounding herself with a supportive riding community – and her engineering brain taking copious notes along the way.

“What kept me going was the desire to get back out on my bike. I really wanted to keep going with the girls every week, and that was my motivation to eat well, and train. I was starting to go back to the gym – but really, I wanted to get back to normal so I could go bike with my friends.”

And, when it all comes down to it, her recovery and motivation to stay healthy in spite of her disease is rooted in her connection to her community, her passion for riding and an outlook that embraces all her Somethings – and being open and straightforward with how she takes it on – something we could all learn from.

“Maybe it’s not Crohn’s Disease – it could be another condition – don’t be afraid to talk about it. It brought me the realization of what’s really important in life and now, it’s part of me and I have nothing to hide.”