FULL CIRCLE

On an afternoon much like this one about five years ago, I came home from a mountain bike ride in a mood as foul as the weather was beautiful. My wife, the most wonderful woman in the world and my involuntary sports psychologist, asked me what was wrong.

“I’m just not any good at this!” I blurted out, throwing my hands up in frustration. “I think everybody thinks I’m some sort of mountain biking guru, but I’m not even good at it!”

That day’s ride had been one of those where everything felt wrong. I couldn’t find a rhythm, didn’t feel particularly fit, couldn’t clear sections that I normally had little trouble with, and spent more time pushing my bike, bouncing off trees, or toppling over than pedaling. It was the kind of day that amplifies the unhelpful parts of my mind; the parts that call me an impostor, a poser, a pretender. The parts that want me to give up on things that are hard for me.

What makes those voices so powerfully detrimental is that they seize on an element of truth. Fact is, I’m not a great mountain biker, comparatively speaking. I’m not ultra fit, or daring, or lightning fast. My technical skills are only passable. I can’t ride a wheelie. I roll most jumps I come across, especially if I haven’t ridden that trail a dozen or so times. My bunny hops would present mortal danger to an actual bunny.

That I am The World’s Most Mediocre Mountain Biker™ flies in the face of how I am sometimes publicly portrayed or perceived. As a race director, a coach, and a writer about bike things, people sometimes assume I’m much more accomplished on a bike than I am. When I talk about the dozens of crazy races I’ve done, I sometimes accidentally exude the confidence of a competent racer, rather than the pack filler who merely survived many of those events.

There’s a dissonance between those two concepts that can make a bad day on the bike feel so much worse than it really was. Which is why my wife’s next question was right on the money:

“Who cares?”

At 15, I didn’t understand the irony of riding a Huffy mountain bike with the IRONMAN logo emblazoned on the downtube. I had never heard of a triathlon in 1998. All I knew was that it was the coolest bike I had ever seen, and that I would need to mow a lot of lawns to pay for it.

I didn’t know that the SRAM 3x7 drivetrain (with grip shifters!) would barely work, or that the linear-pull brakes were more of a suggestion of slowing down than functional devices for stopping, or that it weighed about as much as I did, as a scrawny high school kid. Nobody told me that the perpetually wobbly wheels could be trued at a professional bike shop, or that a drop or two of oil would quiet down the chain. All I understood was that it looked cool, and had metallic blue paint, just like my dad’s beloved Mustang.

After many lawns mowed and many Lego purchases postponed, I finally had it—my dream bike! The obsession was instant, and I wasted no time in doing the time-honored dance of all cyclists with a new bike, even one as uninitiated as me: I accessorized. Reflectors came off, a headlight and digital speedometer were added, and I found an adult-looking helmet that almost-sorta-fit, and almost-sorta matched.

That bike opened my teenage world in ways I never expected. It was the first non-hand-me-down bike I owned and my proudest possession, even while many of my friends were getting cars. I took it everywhere: girlfriends’ houses, school, church, more lawn mowing jobs, even Christmas shopping. I made my dad strap it to the back of our Aerostar for a vacation to Montana, where I discovered the shortcomings of the brakes while descending the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park.

But it was that $18 digital speedometer that became the key to my ongoing obsession. The smell of melting brake pads in Montana notwithstanding, I became consumed with figuring out how to go faster. I remember once hitting an indicated 45mph in Hocking Hills, which makes adult me wonder why in heaven’s name I was looking down at such a time.

The irony of the bike itself came full circle in a church parking lot. More than a decade before Strava hit the internet, I arranged a short course (i.e. a segment) for myself and started time-trialling. When my lap times soon plateaued, I did what any good bike nerd would do, and blamed my equipment. It had something to do with the gearing, I figured. Couldn’t be the motor.

I sat down at the dining room table one night with a notepad and a calculator, and figured out the gear ratios for each of my blue Huffy’s 21 speeds. My hunch was that I just needed to shift in the correct order to make the best use of all the gears. Much to my dismay, there was considerable overlap. What a terrible design, I thought. Worse, there was no clear way to remember the “correct” shifting sequence other than to memorize it, or write it down and tape it to the top tube. I did the latter. It was not a successful experiment.

This level of obsession carried on until I got the first car I liked, at age 17. It was a 1988 Chevrolet Beretta GT with a V-6 and a 5-speed manual and a Pioneer 6x9 sound system that I installed myself. Naturally, it was metallic blue (with rust accents). When it was running right, it made about 13 horsepower, but it sounded good. Sure, the fuel pump would cavitate and cause the engine to sputter if you turned left too fast on less than a half tank of gas. And yeah, the parking brake would lock up sometimes, requiring a partial disassembly of the right rear brake and several whacks with a hammer, a procedure which I imagined deeply impressed my Homecoming date. On a good day, the pins that held up the headliner even stayed in place!

But no matter. I had found a new, totally inappropriate machine to try and make go fast. The bike was retired to the shed, and I would spend the next decade or so fixing fast airplanes, and building fast motorcycles, and getting fat.

My wife’s question in our kitchen, as I stood there sweaty and dirty and exasperated, was exactly the reset I needed. Attaching my experience on a bike to somebody else’s imagined expectations is a perfect way to suck the joy out of every pedal stroke. My own expectations are harsh enough without worrying about what anybody else thinks.

People fall in love with bikes, and mountain bikes in particular, for different reasons. Some people like the techy, rocky, sketchy bits. They love “beating” a section of trail, picking their way through a rock garden on a line most riders don’t even see, much less attempt. Other riders love to go full send off big jumps and drops, or fight for podium positions, or blast up endless climbs.

But that’s not what brought me to the sport. I just like to go fast. I love to lose myself in the flow of a trail. I love to ogle cool bikes and tinker with them in my garage. I love to feel the tiny differences from changes in my setup. And more than lap times or segment PRs, I’ve found that I love to string together a clean lap, something that feels well-executed and smooth. My whole relationship with bikes from the start was more about learning than competing.

Somewhere along the way, I figured out that I don’t have to love all of everybody’s reasons for getting on a bike as much as they do. I’m even allowed to think some of them sound awful, like riding your bike across the continent in 12 days. Turns out, the people who love those things don’t think any less of me as a rider, or a person, just because I don’t. Bike people are cool like that.

My latest two-wheeled obsession isn’t the latest, or greatest, or even the coolest bike I’ve ever seen. It’s a 13-year-old LeMond time trial bike that I rescued from a barn in Marysville. But it’s right in line with the rest of the bikes I’ve added to the stable in the last few years. It makes me smile when I look at it, and it’s fun to try and make it go fast.

A friend recently remarked that he was impressed I was still out riding and training with all of the bike events shut down for the foreseeable future. But the truth is, I’m just out playing on my bikes, same as I’ve always done. Tinkering, and learning, and trying to go fast. As long as I can remember that’s all I’m out there to do, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble strapping on a helmet and getting out the door, no matter what else is going on in the world around me.


Via: https://www.thegravellot.com/