Katie Brim Is Going International

 Katie Brim Is Going International

By the time you read this, Lowell resident Katie Brim will be on her way to compete in her first ever international para-cycling competition. Katie will be a member of Team USA and they will be competing in two events put on by the UCI (Union Cycliste International). The first is the UCI 2022 Para Cycling World Cup that will be held in Quebec City, Canada August 4-7 followed by the 2022 Road World Champions August 11-14 in Baie Comeau, Canada.

“I am extremely nervous and excited for this amazing opportunity as this will be my first time racing internationally,” Brim stated. “I am going into these races like I have every race I have done this year and that is to do the best that I personally can do and learn as much as I can.”

You may have seen Katie whiz by on her low slung hand powered racing bike. She rides/trains six days a week on the roads around Lowell and Ionia. Nasty weather doesn’t slow her down a bit because she has a stationary smart trainer in the garage that is set up to mimic the changing elevations of riding on a road course. Brim attended Lowell schools from kindergarten until she graduated in 2016. She spent four years on the crew team and loved every minute of it. She was attending Ferris State University in pursuit of a degree in construction management. 

Her life changed in December of 2017 when she went in for surgery to address an ongoing issue with a disc in her lower back. As she came out of the surgery, Katie had numbness and paralysis that affected her from the collar bones on down. She was transferred from Spectrum to Mary Free Bed. To date, there are no clear answers as to what happened during surgery. It is nearly impossible to imagine the impact such an occurrence would have on a person, especially an active teen-ager. 

“The days in Mary Free Bed were very difficult but thanks to the amazing team there I was introduced to all the possibilities that can still be after a traumatic experience like mine,” Katie recalled. “I was very fortunate to have an amazing rehabilitation hospital like Mary Free Bed in my backyard.”

Katie admitted to being “pretty down” for about 18 months after having her life turned inside out. She started interacting with Nick Long, who works with adaptive athletes in all kinds of sports, at Mary Free Bed. She credits him with helping her to see that her future was not as grim as she first imagined. The thing that really helped her turn a corner and move forward with her new life was a quote she read from painter and author Walter Inglis Anderson. “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have – life itself.” 

Adaptive sports became a tool in turning her life around. Katie got serious about wheelchair rugby first because it was a winter sport. Then she took up hand cycling, but never really imagined that she would compete on a national or international level. Fast forward to 2022 and that has all changed. When asked how many races she had been in so far this year Brim was hard pressed to come up with an exact number, but she knew it was “more than 20”. She has competed all over the country traveling around in a truck with a fellow hand cycler from the area. This has also turned her into quite the bicycle mechanic. In order to travel, her racing bike needs to be disassembled to fit in the truck. Along the way she has gained the confidence to change out the gear cassettes, work on the brakes, etc. 

Brim’s ability to train year round helped her step up her competitive game. She noticed a significant gain in the force she was able to transfer from her body to the bicycle, but she still underestimated her abilities even after competing in several races around the country including the past two years at the River Bank Run in Grand Rapids. She filled out an application for the International competition before she went to the U.S. Para-cycling National Championships in Chattanooga, TN in June of this year. Even though she filed the paperwork, Katie told me that she was really not thinking she had any kind of a shot at going to Canada because the course in Chattanooga was the toughest one she had ever ridden on with over 500 feet of elevation gains over the five and a half mile loop they raced on. 

“It was really shocking when I got the invitation to Canada in an email from the coach of Team USA,” Katie recalled with a lot of excitement in her voice. “One thing led to another this year and I out did the needed expectations in the National race.” 

Katie expressed how important sports were in her life. She works at Amazon and during the peak of COVID was working 60 hour weeks that left her with little to no energy or time to practice her sports and, more importantly, engage with her fellow athletes. 

“They truly understand what makes life more tolerable,” Brim said. Katie was happy to relate that Amazon was generous in giving her time off to race and granted her a six week leave of absence which will allow her to go to Colorado and then to Canada with the other members of Team USA. She was getting ready to leave to begin her trip to Canada in a couple of days when she spoke with us. Katie had to cut our interview a little short because she was going to squeeze in one more wheelchair rugby practice. Wheelchair rugby sounds very interesting – maybe that is another story for another day. How about this – we should all face North on August 4th and holler out, “GO KATIE GO!”