A painful honesty

There are some things you don’t want to write about. There are some things that perhaps should not be written about. Then there are the things that you know you must write about in order to drop the weight that the thoughts create, so that you can move on.
As previously mentioned, I am fat. I am also a little bit unwell – nothing which stops me working any more, though at first it was very difficult and took some getting used to. My legs sometimes have moment when they teeter on the edge of working or not working. If I’m going through a bad patch, I can’t sit down for too long, need to keep moving, and even then sometimes the numb fairy comes to visit. I’ve got a dopamine deficiency which means my calf muscles don’t understand quite what the rules are when it comes to contracting and flexing. They get the wrong messages sometimes, and as a result, walking up steep hills can be quite painful. They hurt constantly. I take pills every night to help them quieten so I can go to sleep, which also thankfully stop the electric shocks and twitches which nearly drove my partner mad.
I get migraines if I physically exert myself too much for too long a period of time. Sometimes I get them because I’ve talked too much, bounced around too much, not had enough sleep, the barometric pressure needle is in the wrong place or the winds blowing in the wrong direction. Okay, not the last one but sometimes it’s like walking a tightrope – one wrong move and you’ve got a migraine and you’re out of the field for the next 2-3 hrs. As a knock on effect of this, my central nervous system sometimes goes into meltdown, with messages being rerouted the wrong way – this can result in some hilarious and not so hilarious physical reactions.
I’ve also got endocrine problems. I’m not telling you about those. Suffice to say the myths of medical problems occasionally having a knock on effect on your metabolism and the functionality or not of your pancreas are not, in fact, myths. My nutritionist says so and empirical evidence of watching my own body backs this up.
So what relevance is all this? Firstly, let me make it absolutely clear – I’ve asked every specialist I’ve seen whether problems are being caused by being fat. One answered yes, and it wasn’t the neurologist. In actual fact, exercising makes some of these problems worse – exercise raises your blood pressure and I need to be careful because that can cause migraines. Exercise certainly doesn’t convince my brain it should produce more dopamine either. Cycling with calf muscles that think they’re supposed to be 2 inches shorter than they are is a challenge. The position of my feet on the pedals is not the same as yours. Pointing it out won’t change it. I can’t get off and walk up a hill if I am struggling to ride it, that hurts even more.
So why am I riding my bike?
Everyone, I think, has a choice. I could sit on my sofa and refuse to move until someone had helped me sort out my calf muscles. I could sit on my sofa and refuse to move until someone had sorted my migraines out. I don’t. There is one fundamental reason why I don’t, and that is control.
Illness of any kind removes control from you. Illness which results in complete unpredictability when it comes to the behaviour of your muscles, mobility, brain function and eyesight is frustrating and a little scary. There is nothing you can do to change it, nothing you can do to fix it, you are entirely reliant on someone else having an inspired idea about what’s causing it and finding the magic pill which will fix it. Ultimately, you have to make peace with the fact that there may be no magic pill, and no concrete answer either. So you have to find something else. The something else, for me, is mountain biking.
Riding up hill hurts. It hurts your muscles and it hurts your joints. Both these states are temporary, or at least I assume they are for most other people. They are not temporary for me. The pain carries on past the climb, into the descent, in the car ride home, through the night, into the next day, and usually beyond. Separating the pain caused by the riding from the pain caused by the underlying crap is difficult. They tend to merge. You might imagine this is a bad thing, but actually it’s the thing which keeps me going. You see, I choose. I choose to go out, ride up a hill and feel my quads burning. I choose to carry on through the pain until I get to the top of that hill. I choose to ignore the slight soreness in my knees because I know why it’s there and it’s acceptable damage. I choose to battle with my breathing and keep it under control. I choose to sit at the top of some of those hills, gasping for breath, incapable of holding a conversation for 5 minutes. I choose to go fast enough down the other side of the hill that falling off would hurt. I choose to go exploring and encounter corners and rocks I can’t deal with which result in me falling off and yet more bruises and pain. I choose to wake up the next morning, limping a little thanks to pushing a little too hard.
I chose these things because I can. My body decided it was going to take control away from me and now I am taking it back again. 1.5 years it took, before something in my brain snapped and I decided I’d had enough. I decided I wanted to choose my own battleground, choose my own weapon, choose my own challenges and win my own battles.

So, perhaps I am not exercising for the traditional reasons. I wont deny that sometimes on the ups I daydream about one day fitting into a pair of proper mountain biking shorts. It's not dresses, oddly, that motivate, nor the cake I can eat at the end of the ride. It's how I'll feel as well as those shorts. It's the feeling of peace, of a battle won, of serenity. No one knows these things when they see me battling up a hill. No one knows my motivations. I share them here because perhaps I assume that none of you reading this will ever link these words with a person you might see out on the trails. There is no requirement for sympathy or even, really, understanding. Just an honesty and also perhaps a hope, that someone else out there will read these words, comprehend the reasoning behind why I continue to get on my bike, and be inspired to pick one up themselves.

You too can choose. You too can reach the top. Anyone can do this, it's simply a matter of believing you can, because your body is designed to be pushed, and it wont let you down. And believe me when I say, you walk a little taller, every single time you fight and win.

Me & my Marin

There will be more silly comics soon, I promise, they're in draft, they just need redrawing and scanning.

Meanwhile, I suddenly realised that I have a new bike and I've not actually reviewed it. Which is terribly remiss of me, so here's a review. Don't expect technical talk, I ride by feel and instinct, and I chose my bike the same way.

As a result of a much bemoaned theft of my previous bike, a GT Outpost with modded stem (bright red) and pre-loved Reba Races, I needed a new bike. I did some reading, got mired in the intricacies of Deores and Juicies and promptly forgot it all again the second I rode the Marin Eldridge Grade I currently own. I suspect I may be the only person to walk into a bike shop looking for a bike for the boyfriend (a Specialised Rockhopper Pro was acquired) to emerge with an entirely different bike to the one I went in thinking I wanted, purely based on riding it up and down the road behind the bike shop.

I don't believe in love at first sight with anything. But it was love at first ride. If bikes had personalities, this one would have been full of laughter. Light footed, whippet fast, quite bouncy and left me with the widest grin and slightly breathless. I had heard of Mazziochi forks but had no idea if the Bombers were any good, it had Hayes brakes which I'd never heard of, SRAM bog standard mechs. Nothing special components wise, in fact positively meh, probably. I knew that, but I also knew that no matter how fantastically specced the Rockhopper was, the frame geometry sucked for me. The Marin, on the other hand, felt like a racehorse, and I knew it was going to climb hills with a voracity I needed weighing as much as I do.

I put a deposit down on the spot. A week later it was on the roof of our car, coming home with us. I had just spent a thousand pounds on something I'd not researched, not spent weeks obsessing over and cost more than anything else I've ever bought in my life.

I'm still in love, even though I've only ridden it on towpaths, jumped it a little, ragged it as much as possible as you can on a mud packed bit of flat singletrack with a few compressions strung along it. It's everything I thought it would be when I rode it up and down a road the first time. The back end is skittish, and I need to change my weight distribution on loose shale and shifting dust. The grips are a different size, so I needed to get used to that. The gears needed a bit of switching up and down and up and down while cycling round and round in circles to bed them in a bit - now they're perfect and rarely skip (it's user error when they do, I freely admit), the saddle is perfect, the tyres needed a good dusting down but have stopped squeaking and started gripping beautifully and when I push, it responds instantly. Of all the things I noticed and still notice and will continue to notice, it's that. On the Outpost, I pushed and the energy transmission was pathetic. I push on the Marin and it's like (I imagine, I don't drive) comparing a 1.1 Fiesta to a Lotus. It doesn't matter what ring your on (and suddenly I'm spending a lot of time comfortably in the big one), it doesn't matter what terrain or slope you're on, it just goes. Instantly. No lag.

Then there's the brakes, where I could go on for hours about the sheer joy of being able to brake with one finger, the bar width which is wider than I'm used to but seems to give me more control, the slight hum of the tyres over the tarmac. And last, and somehow despite being very much a girl, very much least, it looks like it's built to chew trails. Glossy white, with a gorgeous green highlight, I will never be embarassed to ride up to a trail centre cafe again. It's so gorgeous I'm struggling to buy accessories because I don't want to ruin how it looks. Pathetic, yes. Necessary when female, perhaps - I'm sure not all girls are quite this obsessive. I am bordering on obsessive but really, honestly, I don't get attached to material things. I am really quite attached to my Marin. The bike is everything I ever dreamed a bike could be, and a whole lot more. So, despite intellectually knowing better, my next bike will also be bought based on its grin factor.

Pick it up & pass it on

There is no silly drawing here. I couldn't think of a single way of expressing the following visually, to be honest, but the subject matter is so important to me that without drawing it will have to be.

I believe, very strongly, in karma. No, wait, hang on I'm not going to go all religeous on you. Actually, as it turns out, quite a large amount of you do too.

Mr first experience of mtb karma was at Coed Llandegla. A friend on a rigid bike got dragged onto the blue, and after only a few 100 feet her gears were making the kind of noise you only ever imagine you will hear at 3am from the hotel room next to you. Upside down it went, the two blokes stroked their beards, out came the little tool of tricks and much whizzing and clanking could be heard. Almost every single person who went past while that bike was upside down offered to help. It's a trail centre, it was a weekend, you do the math. Only two people cycled past without a word. Two. By the time the lads had sorted it, my ears were ringing with 'got everything you need?', 'everything alright?', 'need a hand' and 'sure?'.  It was our first introduction to something I've always called pick it up and pass it on.

My second experience of mtb karma was on National Cycle Route 7. Yes, I know it's a roady route, it's covered in tarmac and it is very very long. None of these things are perhaps what you might first think of when the words mountain biking are mentioned. Bear with me. We'd gone because 1 of our group was far more happy on tarmac than mud, was riding a rigid, and in the spirit of fairness it was only right that after dragging her down the side of a blue route, we should accompany her on something more amenable to her riding style.

We had, after only 2 miles, a mechanical. I'm too embarassed to fess up as to what caused it. Suffice to say it's not only on trails I used to have an issue with gear selection and sudden increased gradients. Anyway. I may have dented a chain link. We may have ended up removing a chain link. We definitely ended up being accosted by a passing 'roady' who was in the middle of some ridiculously long epic 200 mile plus trek across Scotland and who produced from his ridiculously tiny pannier with all the aplomb of a street magician, a spare chain link. He definitely assured us it was absolutely fine, there was a bike shop in the next town 20 miles away and no, really, we were entirely welcome. And off he pedalled, leaving behind him two utterly bewildered 30 somethings, gobsmacked, and wondering what kind of world they'd been living in that such an act of unashamed kindness seemed so unusual. We were, it's fair to say, utterly floored. We were in the middle of nowhere, on a weekday, in Scotland, and out of nowhere appeared a helpful person.

The reason I call it pick it up and pass it on, is that I know, with the same certainty that because I live in East Lancs it will rain this week, that some day, somewhere down the line, we will ride past someone, offer to help, and it will be needed. We'll offer to help without self consciousness, without fear of being greeted with raised eyebrows, without reserve. See, once someone has got you out of a sharp corner with no thought for themselves, it makes you think. Really makes you think. About whether in another 100 miles, that lovely bloke on his road bike who might have had a mechanical, whether he would be lucky enough to have a happy passerby offer some help and advice or kit. I can safely say, with almost 100% confidence, that yes, someone would appear, and yes someone would offer to help. Because that's the way mountain bikers and roadies alike seem to roll.

Karma. Give something without thought of whether you will get it back, and you will get it back. Offer help, and even if it is not needed, you are passing on the sense of responsibility and trail etiquette to a new generation. Every time you offer, you are probably teaching someone that it's okay to offer. That the normal rules of the normal world do not apply out on the trails. No one will look at you like you're a psychopath for offering, instead they'll smile and pass on the offer, or bite your hand off with the eagerness of the uneducated. Either way, you will be paying your dues, because it will all come back to you, eventually.

For this reason, and many others, I am proud of the mountain biking community. For this reason, and many others, I can be vicious if random idiots start attacking it. But that's a rant for another day as well.

Finding your own serenity

It is, perhaps, not an accident that phonetically I pronounce Coed Llandegla as Klandeathla. As previously mentioned, I am a hefty lass. I am fitter than I was at the beginning, but not as fit as I will be at the end of this journey, though I doubt there will be an end.

Perhaps if I had looked at the route profile of the blue route at Llandegla, I wouldn't have picked it as the first trail to try at a proper trail centre. Bear in mind that only a year ago, Gisburn was not a proper trail centre by any stretch of the imagination, merely a forgotten backwater, a pale imitation of the golden trails that now reside there. Llandegla was the first place I encountered many things: bike washes, hire sheds, visitor centre replete with toilets, bacon butties replete with provenance of ingredients attached (the composition of a decent bacon butty rant is one for another day), bike racks full of more shiny, complicated and expensive kit than I had ever seen in my whole life.

In my limited experience, there are two kinds of trail. One goes up for what feels like forever, and then comes down at a rate akin to a stock market crash, the other undulates merrily with no rhyme or reason, throwing in surprise gear crunching ups, and following them with blissful but monentary downs. Llandegla falls firmly into the former camp. Somewhere between 5km and 6km is the ascent which greets you with all the harshness of a winters day. The gradient isn't the killer. The duration is. On and on and on and on. Deceptive crests greet you around every corner, enticing you to put that last little bit of effort in, inducing a vain hope that the pain will soon be over, and over every crest is yet another muscle draining climb.

And yet. We go back. We all go back. I know we do because the privately owned operation keeps on going, because the car park is always rammed, because that damn ascent is littered with the many multi coloured hues of the modern mountain bikers livery. It's like a sirens call. I can only speak for myself in what follows, but I suspect that perhaps I am not alone.

Going down requires focus. Absolute concentration. High speed data processing and a little bit of magic added in for good measure. But going up does not. Or, at the very least, going up fire roads does not, and that's what the majority of the up is at Llandegla. Predictable surfaces and gentle corners. And this is where the magic happens for me, because I'll own up right now, I'm probably the biggest geek going. I consume data in streams, multiple streams, from following over 700 people on Twitter and keeping up to 3 email accounts, 4 regular forums, untold blogs and journals and even an old antiquated Bulletin Board System. But on my bike, there is none of this. Instead there is radio silence. No input, no data, no phones, no email, no one nagging for my attention, no one asking for advice, help or a paddle to get out of the creek they've found themselves in. No noise, just silence.

It's my space. Mine. No one can take it, no one can intrude on it. The odd cheery hello is returned, but I quickly and smoothly switch back into the serenity that I find. With nothing else to focus on but the smooth turning of my pedals and the occasioinal twitter of a bird, there is nothing. It's where I write. It's where I remember how to breath. It's the reset button on every bit of stress accrued during the week and it's the place where I find myself. It's a place where I am totally in control, but where I don't actually need to be. I can merrily daydream away, and my legs will keep on pushing. And pushing. And pushing.

Sometimes, when I get to the top, I find other people there. Sometimes I see on their faces, the ones who are not in a group, the same serenity I know is inside me. I don't smile, or nod, or intrude. I don't need to, I don't think. It is, perhaps, imagined, but I really don't think it is. For some of us, the adrenaline is the thing, but in obtaining it, we find our serenity.

I'm on cell 3 in the comic by the way. I came around the same stupid corner and misjudged the change in gradient, lost my gears and nearly fell sideways. Thus resulted a walk. This is an improvement on the previous visits where at different places on the trail I did actually fall sideways. I give thanks on a regular basis that blue routes are so quiet that hitherto no one has witnessed these catastrophic schoolgirl errors, and live in hope that next time will be the time no error occurs at all. It's one of the things which keeps me riding, truth be told, though there are hundreds of those reasons. But should you be riding at Llandegla in the future, and witness a fat girl doing the happy dance of joy after the Somme berm at the top of the shared blue/red ascent, it will be me, and I will be in cell 4, having just ridden 100% of that damn hill.

I suspect for most, a mountain biking nemesis will be a technical feature on the down. I make no apologies for mine being staying on my bike the whole way up a hill. Small victories, my friends, small victories.

Flighty females

I don't often think about being a girl. Not in the sense of 'oh, I'm in the minority here'.

Or at least I didn't. Three things set me apart from the majority of the other bikers sat outside trail centre cafes or sitting at the top of the next section of route catching their breathe. One, I am fat. Two, I am not wearing the same thing that everyone is wearing because I cannot find a damn thing which fits. I've tried, I can't. Default is 3/4 combats and a wicking top and that's the way it will be for a while. Everyone else, and I mean everyone else is in mountain bike baggies and mountain bike specific jerseys. I am a little self conscious of this. But not as badly as I slowly became of being female.

If you're reading this is Scotland, you may wonder what the hell I am talking about. You would be quite right to. Until I rode at Glentress, I was so used to being the sole girl out on the trails that when I finally did ride there, it was a shock. A really big one. I knew two girly bikers had started Glentress, in fact I'd read their skills book and learnt very many things from it, but it never crossed my mind that the ratio of girls to boys would be so massively different. Or, indeed, that the size of people fighting their way up the horrible hill to Buzzards Nest might be so different to what I'd previously experienced, but different it was. It made something better that I didn't know wasn't.

So far, I've been to Gisburn, Coed Llandegla, Whinlatter, Delamere and Glentress. Girls seen art Gisburn until the new trail developments recently? 2. Once of them saw me fall off at my first attempt at singletrack, it wasn't my finest hour. Girls at Coed Llandegla the first time we went? Zero bar me and the other girl I was with. Girls at Whinlatter? 2. Delamere? 2. Maybe 3. None on the downhill section in the bike park area.
It is so much of a rarity at some trail centres to see another girl mountain biking (sorry, but pootling along on a rigid on the green doesn't count in this, mud, adrenaline and a bit of fearlessness has to be present) that on meeting each other in passing, we smile, grin, nod, laugh.....connect. Somehow, it doesn't matter how out of breath you are, how much you are dying, how much you want to give up and go home, you see another woman and you damn well acknowledge because right there in front of you is confirmation that you are not a complete and utter freak for at the least not minding the mud and dust and at the most actually really quite relishing being allowed to play in mud with impunity.

This is not, absolutely not, about sexism. It's nothing to do with it. It's about the creeping awareness, the more rides you go on, that perhaps the hobby which you have been suddenly gripped with an obsession with is not something other women are naturally drawn to. That boys are whizzing past me, some acknowledging, some laughing, some ignoring, but there are no women. That you're beating boys to the bottom of the hill and enjoying the post match analysis very much, thank you, but having a girlfriend to laugh at the ludicrousness of mud as a literal face pack might be quite nice. That somehow, you feel that there is something wrong with you for wanting to beat the boys to the bottom of the hill because that's not how proper ladies are supposed to behave and what on earth is it in you which makes you want to go faster anyway? Why can't you just be happy with knitting or cross stitching, where does the need come from to push your body and mind to their absolute limits?

Being a geek girl is a minority sport. Or at last it was, I don't think that's the reality so much any more. I am used to being in the minority. What I am not used to is the stark emptiness, the complete lack of other females presence.

Having said all that, on visiting Glentress, things changed. I noticed it in the car park and the hire shop - there were girls, and they were hiring hardtails. The further we got from the car park, the more I noticed it, girls on courses being led up the hill, girls in all girl groups possibly on hen 'nights', girls in mixed groups out with their mates, girls in couples out sharing the glee with their other halves. Suddenly, finally, with so much relief, I discovered where all the other girls were hiding. They are many, they are good, they ride with style and elegance and aggression, they ride with grins and glee emnanting from them, they ride just like the boys do.

They also call out encouragement to fat girly bikers dying on hills in a way that the boys do not. They laugh and joke about the cake at the end, they smile and understand in a way that perhaps the boys do not.

Ultimately, gender doesn't matter on a hill. Mud covers us all in the same way. Our styles may be slightly different, our frame geometry might differ, our sit bones might be slightly wider apart, our facial expressions might be more open and expressive but at the bottom, we all feel the same.

The list above? It could be written by a boy, even though the terms might change. I ride like a girl, but on a very fundamental level, I just ride.

Losing on a technicality

 

The things they don't tell you when buy your first bike are many. The things they don't tell you are all of them if you buy it from certain chains, but we wont go there.Suffice to say, I was told with all seriousness when we bought my first bike that it could surive a drop off as high as the shop door. It had Suntour coil forks and I weighed the same then as I do now. It wasn't an auspicious start.

Technical features are mentioned in trail centre grade reviews. They are not mentioned on bridleways. Bridleways are enticing little buggers, marked on a map as they are with those intriguing long dash black lines, weaving their way innocently across the countryside. The thought process when attempting one 3 weeks after acquiring a new bike went something along the lines of 'it's local, horses can get up it, how hard can it be'. Oh the innocence of the inexperienced.

An exhilerating ride down the side of a steep hill peppered with tree roots later and I had a mouthful of flies and dust, had learnt that the mountain bikers kitted out head to foot in gear might not necessarily be faster than me and I'd broken my forks. I didn't realise at the time, only mentioning in passing to my other half that the suspension seemed 'stuck' but broken they were. Despite the complete blast we had that evening, we've not been back. I decided trail centres and graded trails might be a better idea until I was a little more technically proficient.

Which is where the berm comes in. A berm is a banked turn. Mostly a switchback (u-turn), sometimes slightly less tight a turn than that, they are always banked. Again, the height of the bank can vary. The point of a berm is to carry as much speed as you are comfortable with through or around a turn. It allows less turn of the handlebars, which then allows for more contact with the ground because your weight is better distributed to allow for this.Or something. Anyway, they work. You know how I know this? 

Coed Llandegla is how I know this. The otherwise genius trailbuilders, in their erstwhile wisdom put the first berm on their blue route, and thus the first berm I ever met on my bike right before a fence exit. So, after slogging up 5km of endless agonising uphill, I see this berm, and I think, wahoo! time for some fun. I've read that the whole point of a berm is to carry speed, so I don't slow down, rip around it, feel chuffed for 1/2 a second that I've got a beautiful line on my first whizzy corner and then get a short sharp lesson in braking, traction, gravity and sheer luck. It was.....unpleasant. The audience was.......mortifying. 

Having said that, as time has passed and I have come to understand a little better the psychology of trail builders (evil surprises but generally in sight line, utter genius on the downs but agonising creatures of doom on the ups) berms have become my best friend. While no 2 above has not happened to me (but to others who shall remain nameless, leading to me locking on hard on the blue at Whinlatter), there has been a definite progression, a creeping understanding born from post match analysis over a bacon butty of where our lines have actually been compared to where the actually should be. 

Through this analysis has come an appreciation of the other side of mountain biking. Hurtling down the side of a hill over compacted smooth mud, around turns and over little drop offs is the best place on earth. It just is. The feeling of utter joy it gives me is difficult to put into words, but it's a cross between how standing in front of the speakers with my hands in the air and lasers tracing over my head at old raves, crossed with hearing Epic by Faith No More performed live as the sun went down last summer, crossed with an afternoon with nothing to do but read a book and drink freshly made lemonade, crossed with those fantastic conversations you get with new people who you just click with. It is a reason, an obsession, a happiness, a freedom. But it isn't as simple as that.

Once you get off road and onto mud, into trail centres and drawn into the determination to get better and ride your first red, you start to think. To process. To see the problems coming at you as you look ahead at the trail in front, and to process and analyse where your wheels must be, the line to take, your weight distribution, how much feathering of the brakes, what position your pedals must be in. Data coming at you at high speed must be gathered, processed and interpreted and everything must change to respond to that. It's no longer a game of who is the fastest rider, but who is the fastest thinker, and the rules change again.

Thuds, and the errors of judgement which preclude them, however, come to all of us. I've still got the bruises to prove it.

A long hard road

I remember the first time I road my then shiny and new GT Outpost in anger. It was March 2008. I rode it along a canal, I think, right at the beginning, but it wasn't very exciting and it didn't make my heart sing. I wanted something more, and it involved adrenaline, mainly. We then road it around a country park near Preston, but it was only a 2 mile hack and that didn't quite float my boat either.

Then we went to Gisburn. Right now, most of the mountain biking world knows where and what Gisburn is. A year ago (oh how things change, thank you Adrenaline Gateway, thank you nice Council people) things were very very different. Gisburn was a hidden little backwater, certainly not a trail centre, just a tiny collection of routes which a involved a 30 minute internet trawl to yield something as simple as an up to date trail map. No toilets. No signposts. No cafe. No showers. No one else there.

The red route was a 10km hack around mostly forest roads, with a little bit of singletrack thrown in. 'The Rollercoaster' was work in progress and as a result a er.....diversion had been put in place which involved walking mid calf deep through assorted bogs. I remember sitting on the forest road after the diversion and asking Al why I was putting myself through this. Everything hurt. I was severely unfit at this point, drenched in sweat, bright red in the face and to add insult to injury had walked into a tree branch, though it thankfully missed my eye.

And then.

Then we found the singletrack. And I fell off. And I got back on. And I rode some more. And we found the rock garden in the middle of the bit where all the felling had happened, below the barn forest road. And I had to get off and walk it. And I remember muttering under my breath about not getting off one day.

And that was how I got bitten by the singletrack bug. By the mountain biking bug. By the understanding that all the pain of the uphill will always be rewarded by the sheer glee of the down. By being reminded what my body was designed to do and relishing the feeling of bruises and aching muscles. By being absolutely covered in mud, across my face and up my back, and knowing that I'd found something which would get me up off the sofa and out into the big wide open spaces.

I rode that rock garden 4 weeks later. On a GT Outpost. But that's another story.

Riding like a girl

Hi. I'm Lou. I'm 33. I rode my first mountain bike at 32. The last time I rode a bike before that was a road racer when I was 18.
I'm also fat. That's changing, for obvious reasons - you can't ride up the side of a mountain without burning something off, but for the moment, I'm definitely the wrong side of the can't find anything to wear to mountain bike camp.
Additionally, I've got some interesting health problems which mean riding bikes up steep hills is a bit more challenging than maybe it should be, even considering my size. You don't need to know what they are, suffice to say that as in all things, fun must be paid for, but for me the payment is a little different, perhaps, to yours, though I don't wish to make assumptions. Sometimes it means postponing a ride, but it nevers means not going at all, something for which I am truely grateful.
Having said all that, I can happily ride Blues, do the descents without riding my brakes, can corner decently on switchbacks both up and down and rock gardens are something I'm working on though only downhill ones. I can ride 10km and not die, the Northshore on the Blue at Gisburn can be done without dabbing and to be honest, all the downhills on Blues I've done so far at Glentress, Gisburn and Llandegla haven't involved putting a foot down except to stop between sections and catch my breathe a bit. I can even ride on snow and a bit of ice, thanks to the recent British Winter.
I'm not brilliant, but I'm not appallingly awful either, considering how little I've ridden.

Right, now all that's out of the way, why am I writing this?

Mountain biking is changing me. There are the obvious changes, the losing weight ones, the increased lung capacity, the better heartrate, the running up and down stairs without getting out of breathe ones. But I used to be shy. I used to be hesitant. I used to be appallingly awful at making decisions. Yet somehow, put me on the back of a mountain bike and point me downhill, and suddenly I am none of these things. I am in control, I can make line decisions in split seconds, I can change my weight distribution as needed, I can stay off the brakes, I can unlock a skid, I can corner properly, I can keep my head up and process the trail far in advance of it being beneath my wheels. I can do all the things that off the bike I could never do. You would think the skills wouldn't translate. Oh yes, they do. I don't flap any more, because I learnt that on a bike you cannot. I don't hesitate any more, because I learnt that on a bike there is no time. I make decisions and stick to them now, because I learnt that on a bike there is no going back once you are committed to a ramp, corner, drop off or other obstacle. And most of all, I learnt that in taking risks, there are massive rewards.

Mountain biking is changing me. As a result, I am rather enthusiastic about it. I'd quite like to share that enthusiasm with other people, because I believe it's worth it, if only for the health benefits alone.