Before Erin Sills ever rode dirt, she was already doing things most riders never will.

She is best known as a land speed record holder with more than fifty records earned with her team across multiple sanctioning bodies. She lived at the edge of terminal velocity, on salt flats and long courses where the horizon doesn’t rush toward you so much as taunt you to inch closer This is riding measured in patience, precision, and restraint, not bravado. It’s a discipline where the smallest mistake ends a run, and the cleanest pass is not appreciated until you see the number.

Erin’s road miles were clocked sport touring on pavement, crisscrossing the western United States. Nevada in particular. Highway 50, long straight valleys between mountain ranges, wide sightlines, and room to think. Roads where you could ride fast, yes, but more importantly, ride deliberately. That sensibility carried directly into land speed racing, where the job isn’t to wrestle a bike but to coexist with it.

At two hundred miles an hour, the motorcycle never truly goes straight.

The wind changes. The surface changes. The bike floats beneath you, and if you tense up or try to force it back into line, you lose the run. Land speed racing rewards riders who can stay calm while everything is moving.

What Erin didn’t expect was that time going slow in the dirt would have such an impact at high speeds.

When she was invited to by Shawn Thomas, who was a lead instructor with BMW RawHyde dirt training in Colorado, she almost declined. Dirt riding wasn’t her world. She lived by the mindset that she liked her collarbones and wanted to keep them intact. But Shawn was a friend of her late husband and at the time Erin was saying yes to anything. 

So she went. 

The training took place high in the Colorado mountains, riding passes, climbing well above ten thousand feet. Erin was bad at it at first. The bike moved unpredictably. The ground refused to cooperate. Everything she normally relied on grip, feedback, certainty felt compromised.

Dirt riding demanded that she stop trying to control every input. She learned to let the bike wander beneath her and correct gently. To stay loose. To trust traction even when it wasn’t obvious. At five and ten miles an hour, she was learning the same lesson she needed at two hundred.

Let the bike float.

That experience reshaped how she approached land speed racing. On salt, traction is never perfect. Wind can push you across a fifty foot wide course. “It's not that hard to go fast in a straight line, but it's really hard to be fastest in a straight line.” Dirt riding trained her nervous system to accept movement instead of fighting it, to stay relaxed while the motorcycle sorted itself out.

That crossover didn’t pull her away from speed. It sharpened it.

One of Erin’s most prized achievements is the Production 1000cc land speed record. It’s coveted because it leaves very little room for interpretation. The bike must remain almost exactly as it rolled off the showroom floor, down to the small feeler nubs on the foot pegs, “you know the ones that most riders rip off immediately?” Power is limited. Aerodynamics are restricted. What’s left is the rider’s ability to execute perfectly.

Breaking a land speed record isn’t about just the bike being one hundred percent, rather Erin describes it as everything being at one hundred percent at the same time. The surface has to cooperate. The weather has to behave. The bike has to pull cleanly. And the rider has to hit every shift point exactly, manage throttle without triggering traction control, and stay fully committed even as the bike drifts beneath them.

Power, aerodynamics, and traction all matter but the rider influences all three.

One of Erin’s most memorable passes came on the salt flats in Bolivia, “I think my record was 238, my peak speed was 242” and it was just a calm, zen, beautiful experience. “It happened to be the record that I set, breaking my late husband's record.” Erin suggested watching the quick video from the event (linked here) and watch the end of that 360 video from Stephen Gregory, owner of Gregory Imagery, because you'll see Ralph Hudson tell me the speed and “I knew that I had broken Andy's record.” 

The culmination of a year of work building the bike, which includes flying Shane from Australia to San Diego, then putting the bike in the container in Long Beach, shipping that container from Long Beach to Bolivia, and crossing our fingers that it's going to arrive in Bolivia. It arrived five days later than it was supposed to arrive, along with a couple other teams but some of the teams that were racing, their motorcycles never arrived.

Today, Erin is working toward a different kind of milestone.

She’s actively training her teammate and crew chief, Curtice Thom, to break her Production 1000cc record on another production bike. The goal is to get him into the 200 Mile Per Hour Club, earning the red hat that only comes from breaking a record over that threshold at an SCTA sanctioned event. 

And once he breaks her record? She plans to take it back.

Behind every one of Erin’s achievements is a deeply collaborative team. Her motor builder, Shane Kinderis, brings world class expertise. Gary Orr, owner of San Diego BMW Motorcycles plays a key role. Her primary sponsor, Top 1 Oil, supports the effort at the highest level. And through Women Riders Now, Erin continues to advocate for and elevate women in motorcycling across disciplines.

As we wrapped up, I asked Erin what it was like to have her motorcycle in the Smithsonian,  “I was able to take my college best friends who I've known for 40 years to the exhibit this last summer and had the privilege of getting a private tour of the Smithsonian from the curators.”

Which Erin mentioned was incredible. “But the coolest part was that as we're standing there, a young family with a girl and a boy, nine or ten, something like that. Recognized me because there's a photo of me up on the wall and then the kids came over and we're excited about motorcycling, both the girl and the boy. That was honestly the best part about all of it, is when somebody is saying, oh, I can do that. You're approachable. You're just a normal human who's done some cool things in their life. You're not positioned as some unattainable goal.”

Take aways:

For experienced riders:
The skill ceiling is higher than you think. Mastery doesn’t come from doing one thing harder it comes from learning how other disciplines challenge your habits.

For new riders:
You don’t have to choose one path. Every mile, whether slow or fast, teaches something valuable if you stay open to it.

For all of us:
Progress often comes from letting go of control, trusting the process, and allowing movement instead of resisting it.

To keep up with Erin, you can follow her at Erin Sills on FB or Hunter Sills Racing on FB