“I’m so busy preparing for the exams,” Niharika Reddy says, almost apologetically. She just gave her preliminary Class 12 boards, and has finals coming up in February.
She set all studying aside while preparing for the 2023 Deccan Cliffhanger (DC), which she won on November 26. Now she’s racing to make up for the lost time.
If Reddy sounds a bit like she’s pedalling full-tilt on a downhill slope, it’s because that is, more or less, what she has been doing.
The 17-year-old set a new record at the DC ultra-cycling race, which zips across 643 km, from Pune to Goa, up through the Sahyadri mountains and then down to the coast.
She finished it in a record time of 31 hours, 55 minutes and 40 seconds — the fastest by any woman in the race’s 10-year history. And she was the youngest female to ever compete solo.
In fact, the organisers had to make a special exemption to allow her to participate (the minimum age is 18). She then finished the race so fast that she fell within the women’s cut-off qualification for the Race Across America (RAAm), one of the world’s most challenging ultra-cycling events. The qualifying mark for women was to complete the DC solo in under 34 hours. Reddy can now register for RAAm this year or next.
But she can’t really think about any of that right now.
“My exams…,” she says. There’s that sense, again, of going downhill full-tilt. But it’s been worth it, she adds, grinning. She targeted 32 hours and aimed to beat the existing record. She trained, prepared and timed her race accordingly. Now, she wanted other girls to see a girl do it, she says.
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The race really began, for Reddy, at the 2022 DC awards ceremony. She participated in the relay category, with her uncle Sudhakar Reddy. And as they stood there, happy to have competed, she heard the announcer say that, in its nine years, only three women solo riders had finished the race.
“That is when I decided that I wanted to come back and do it solo,” she says.
It was a grand ambition. The Navi Mumbai girl only took to long-distance cycling three years ago. She was recovering from a fracture in her leg, amid the pandemic, and had been prescribed regular exercise.
Her father, businessman Bhaskar Reddy, 46, had just bought himself a road bike (a light version of the bicycle meant for use on pavements and urban cycling tracks). They began to ride together, and were soon going on 5 km and 10 km rides without effort. They graduated to 50 and 100 km rides into the Western Ghats.
In early 2022, her uncle Sudhakar moved to Hyderabad. Why not cycle there and pay him a visit, her father said one day. Her mother, homemaker Vani Reddy, 40, gave them her blessing. Thus began a three-day road trip across about 690 km.
“I loved it. Of course, it was extremely tiring and taxing. While climbing ghats I still sometimes think, ‘Why am I doing this?’,” Niharika says, laughing. “But then I ride downhill. And I feel incredible!”
Sensing her interest in long-distance cycling, her uncle suggested they team up for the DC relay race.
He also took her to a talk by Kabir Rachure, a veteran ultra-cyclist with multiple RAAm finishes to his name. “I remember him saying that the women-to-men ratio in ultra-cycling is lopsided, and that more of us should do this. That really hit me hard, and motivated me further,” Niharika says. “The feminist inside me woke up then. And achieving things like being the fastest female to finish a race… gives me a lot of happiness.”
Niharika prepared for the 2022 DC with help from Rachure. They focused largely on power-training and practised indoors, on a stationary bike. She was very nervous on the day of the event. Her uncle did most of the heavy lifting, she says.
Things changed once her dream to finish solo was born. She spent more time on power training, and strength and conditioning exercises. She and her uncle also rode the Great Himalayan Ultra in Ladakh in August, and although they finished outside the cutoff time, it was a rich learning experience.
The biggest lesson she took away from it was the importance of a quality crew, Niharika says. At DC 2023, she was armed with a six-member crew in two cars, had nutrition and water on the go, got massages and advice on race strategy and bike management. “The race and the win wouldn’t have been possible without my team,” she says.
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So eager was Niharika to ride the DC solo that she struck a deal with her parents after the Himalayan sojourn: once it was done, she wouldn’t touch a bike again until after her exams, and she would dedicate herself to her books.
She is determined to keep that promise. Not just for her parents, but for herself.
Ultra-cycling in India is extremely niche and expensive, and she understands, she says, that it cannot be her livelihood. “I want the right career. I am leaning towards engineering... I think it might be too early for me to do RAAm right now, but as a cyclist, it is a dream we all hold. So I will hold on to that in my mind and heart.”
She will “get back to this fully, for sure,” she adds. “I will be riding somewhere. I’ll do something worthwhile… before ending it.”
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