It's a bit quiet in here.
I'll be honest, because generally I am. I've started Physiotherapy for my legs. Official verdict? Climbing and mountain biking, because they're all exercise which involves pushing through the toes, have caused contraction. My upper back calf muscles contracted pulling on the lower ones. The lower ones got narked with this and as a result eventually contracted. This meant twice as much pull on my achilles tendon. It didn't like it much either, so guess what it did? Contracted. The muscles across the bottom of my feet are now moaning at me. Eventually it will reach my toes, I expect.
I've not been climbing for 2 years and I did explain I'd only been seriously pedalling since Feb and before that hadn't been since September last year, and that the pain has been getting progressively worse for 2 years, but it just fell on deaf ears. I'm all out of argueing. So walking uphill was hideous for a reason which is surprisingly reassuring to know. Llandegla riders will no doubt understand why the double steep hill or whatever amusing name it's been called nearly had me nailing my other half to the path for telling me it was half the length it actually transpired to be. It was a great incentive to not get off my bike and ride the first bit without dabbing though. Amazing, the motivation you can find. In fact, the second part of double steep hill is the only, and I seriously mean the absolutely only time I have got off my bike and walked up a hill since February. I am proud of this in the same way that I suspect others are proud of their not stopping til they've got to the top of the hill rule. Or in some loons cases, not stopping until the absolute end of the ride rule.
Result, of course, is having my legs hammered by the physio on a weekly basis. I've got knots in my leg muscles, same way others have knots in their back from sitting at desks all day. Some of them are rock solid, literally, according to Miss physio. I can't feel a thing, they're numb, but apparently it's bad. So I've been given stretches. Lots of stretches. They hurt. Mrs Physio knows this, I know this, we both know this but still they must be done. Eventually the hurt turns to numbness, but for a while, because the muscles have been allowed to contract for so long, they fight back and whine and moan at me and desperately try to contract every second I try and convince them they want to stretch.
I'm trying to carry on riding my bike. In fact, as ever, the only time nothing hurts is when I'm riding my bike, because my legs are warm, and my shin pads get worn all the time, earning me snarky looks form other bikers on towpaths who assume everyones bodies behave just as theirs do and have no clue about the wonderful stupidity bodies can inflict on you with no warning. My shin pads are my little heaters and they get me home and no snarky comment or snidey glare is making me take them off. Difficult and challenging and stupidly the most fun things of all, the off roading, is being parked a little, mostly because I am nervous as all hell the second someone says 'lets just go up here and see what it's like' and the embarassment of having to admit to something people can't see is wrong is just cross making. And cross isn't what mountain biking is supposed to make me, happy is what mountain biking is supposed to be making me.
What I am not managing is to remain positive. Well, I am positive, positive that it's fixable and eventually my muscles will get the message but I'm not quite as happy bouncy full of the joys of spring as I usually am. So just bear that in mind.
Now. If the weather could just warm up because cold makes muscles, yes you've guessed it, contract, I'd be a much happier bunny. So if someone somewhere could just do a nice little sundance for me, I'd be so grateful.
I've turned comments off, and I shant be tweeting about this post either. The simple act of writing this post has made me determined to ride my bike tomorrow, because worse things happen at sea, and this is where I stop moaning, WTFU and just get the hell on with it. Northern grit. I lost mine for a bit, but I think it might be back.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Hello, Bonjour, Hallo, Hola!
The other thing is also, sadly, a mini-rant. Mostly, when it comes to biking, I am relentlessly positive, enthuse at everyone within a mile radius, drag other people into the 'sport' and say hello to every non mountain biker I ride past because I refuse to be the biker walkers moan and whine about when they get home.
But somethings gone a bit wrong round 'ere. I'd be really interested to know if it's just round 'ere because I suspect it's not.
I am quite strongly of the opinion that everyone should be allowed to ride a bike, be welcomed at trail centres and given gentle advice when things go a bit wrong. In fact, when we first started riding gently last year, the amount of people who offered smiles, hellos, assistance with mechanicals and generally were totally ace blew me away.
Not any more. Today, 3 people said hello. Groups of 4's passed me and only 1 person said hi. It wasn't quiet at Gisburn this morning, it really wasn't and I've never come across a bunch of more miserable sods in my life. I left wondering why anyone had bothered, to be honest, because there didn't seem to be an awful lot of fun being had, I'll tell you that for nothing. In fact, most people were kind enough to look at me as if I had a spare alien growing out of the side of my head. I got progressively more and more annoyed as I rode the wrong way back down the blue route - yes, I was contraflowing. I was deliberately contraflowing. I suspect some of the horrid stares and glares were down to this - for information, I broke one of my brake levers and I wasn't carrying on the horror that is Gisburn with only one brake. But no, never crossed anyones mind I might be riding the wrong way through choice. Nor did it cross anyones minds that perhaps I might be lost - which I might well have been. No one asked. No one said hello. Just glares. Same in the car park. Same when I was going the right way around. Frankly, by the end of the ride I was starting to wonder if I'd wandered into a parallel universe of mountain biking where only unfriendly people had got on their bikes.
That's before we get to the group of, frankly, idiots riding a slew of hired Treks off down the road from the Dog and Partridge with no helmets, having drunk two pints each, bumped into our car more times than I can count, completely blocked all access to the bike wash in their determination to park all their bikes together and just generally been inconsiderate pack animal idiots. Their progress down the hill consisted of ridng 3 abreast down towards Cocklets and lots of weaving across the road. I await reports of a mass death.
I don't know what's happened but it needs sorting. When we go out on a Thursday night riding around Roddlesworth, everyone to the very last from dog walkers to roadies are friendly and polite and frankly lovely. I hate to say it, but none of the accents I heard today were local. So on the one hand, thank goodness our local sense of politeness and friendliness is not lost, it's people coming from other places who don't know any better who are being.....taciturn. But that's not the way we do it here. We stop and chat. We're friendly. We offer spare bits and pieces and we pick it up and pass it on. We smile even if we've no breath for a Hello. We are quite a loose community but there is, at the very least, an acknowledgement that we are all doing something we love very much and that's why we're out in the wind and the rain. No other reason would get you out of the door on a morning like this one.
So, if you're going to come and ride in East Lancs, pack a smile. Remember a hello. Because a few of us are getting hearty sick of your riding two abreast and not moving over to let us past, your determination to leave your bikes at exits of singletrack and your attitude that you don't need to bother to acknowledge other people because it's all about being too cool or something. We don't do cool here. We do heart, and soul. We do love of riding like few other places can. We don't care if it's blowing a gale or pissing it down, we're still going riding cos we said we would and if we didn't, we'd never ride. We love our mill towns and our hills and we're actually really quite proud of the network of fantastic, absolutely completely fantastic trails which are springing up around us at quite a rate of knots. I think I can safely speak for almost every single East Lancs (and, actually West Yorks) rider when I say, we love where we live because we are absolutely spoilt when it comes to places to ride. We're quite proud and we're quite attached to it.
If you come and take advantage of those trails, we don't ask you to pay. We don't charge you for parking at the moment. But blow me backwards, if we started charging in smiles, half of you lot wouldn't get in. Lighten up, if it's not fun, go home. If you drove however long it took you to get to us, one assumes you wanted to be here. You've wearing the kit from head to toe, you've obviously spent a lot of money on something you seem to love doing. Your bike is shiny and looked after. You look exactly like a mountain biker, but I'm sorry, in my book I didn't meet a lot of mountain bikers today and I don't understand if it's cos I don't look like one but I'm out on the trails anyway, or whether you're all just a little bit ignorant and rude.
I am confused, dear readers. Very very confused. And quietly praying that this is not the start of some horrid trend but a mere abberation due to the weather or how early it was, and indeed that somehow it was me, us, our little group, that something about us meant people didn't say hello. But I've got a sneaky suspicion it might not be that at all.
But somethings gone a bit wrong round 'ere. I'd be really interested to know if it's just round 'ere because I suspect it's not.
I am quite strongly of the opinion that everyone should be allowed to ride a bike, be welcomed at trail centres and given gentle advice when things go a bit wrong. In fact, when we first started riding gently last year, the amount of people who offered smiles, hellos, assistance with mechanicals and generally were totally ace blew me away.
Not any more. Today, 3 people said hello. Groups of 4's passed me and only 1 person said hi. It wasn't quiet at Gisburn this morning, it really wasn't and I've never come across a bunch of more miserable sods in my life. I left wondering why anyone had bothered, to be honest, because there didn't seem to be an awful lot of fun being had, I'll tell you that for nothing. In fact, most people were kind enough to look at me as if I had a spare alien growing out of the side of my head. I got progressively more and more annoyed as I rode the wrong way back down the blue route - yes, I was contraflowing. I was deliberately contraflowing. I suspect some of the horrid stares and glares were down to this - for information, I broke one of my brake levers and I wasn't carrying on the horror that is Gisburn with only one brake. But no, never crossed anyones mind I might be riding the wrong way through choice. Nor did it cross anyones minds that perhaps I might be lost - which I might well have been. No one asked. No one said hello. Just glares. Same in the car park. Same when I was going the right way around. Frankly, by the end of the ride I was starting to wonder if I'd wandered into a parallel universe of mountain biking where only unfriendly people had got on their bikes.
That's before we get to the group of, frankly, idiots riding a slew of hired Treks off down the road from the Dog and Partridge with no helmets, having drunk two pints each, bumped into our car more times than I can count, completely blocked all access to the bike wash in their determination to park all their bikes together and just generally been inconsiderate pack animal idiots. Their progress down the hill consisted of ridng 3 abreast down towards Cocklets and lots of weaving across the road. I await reports of a mass death.
I don't know what's happened but it needs sorting. When we go out on a Thursday night riding around Roddlesworth, everyone to the very last from dog walkers to roadies are friendly and polite and frankly lovely. I hate to say it, but none of the accents I heard today were local. So on the one hand, thank goodness our local sense of politeness and friendliness is not lost, it's people coming from other places who don't know any better who are being.....taciturn. But that's not the way we do it here. We stop and chat. We're friendly. We offer spare bits and pieces and we pick it up and pass it on. We smile even if we've no breath for a Hello. We are quite a loose community but there is, at the very least, an acknowledgement that we are all doing something we love very much and that's why we're out in the wind and the rain. No other reason would get you out of the door on a morning like this one.
So, if you're going to come and ride in East Lancs, pack a smile. Remember a hello. Because a few of us are getting hearty sick of your riding two abreast and not moving over to let us past, your determination to leave your bikes at exits of singletrack and your attitude that you don't need to bother to acknowledge other people because it's all about being too cool or something. We don't do cool here. We do heart, and soul. We do love of riding like few other places can. We don't care if it's blowing a gale or pissing it down, we're still going riding cos we said we would and if we didn't, we'd never ride. We love our mill towns and our hills and we're actually really quite proud of the network of fantastic, absolutely completely fantastic trails which are springing up around us at quite a rate of knots. I think I can safely speak for almost every single East Lancs (and, actually West Yorks) rider when I say, we love where we live because we are absolutely spoilt when it comes to places to ride. We're quite proud and we're quite attached to it.
If you come and take advantage of those trails, we don't ask you to pay. We don't charge you for parking at the moment. But blow me backwards, if we started charging in smiles, half of you lot wouldn't get in. Lighten up, if it's not fun, go home. If you drove however long it took you to get to us, one assumes you wanted to be here. You've wearing the kit from head to toe, you've obviously spent a lot of money on something you seem to love doing. Your bike is shiny and looked after. You look exactly like a mountain biker, but I'm sorry, in my book I didn't meet a lot of mountain bikers today and I don't understand if it's cos I don't look like one but I'm out on the trails anyway, or whether you're all just a little bit ignorant and rude.
I am confused, dear readers. Very very confused. And quietly praying that this is not the start of some horrid trend but a mere abberation due to the weather or how early it was, and indeed that somehow it was me, us, our little group, that something about us meant people didn't say hello. But I've got a sneaky suspicion it might not be that at all.
And this isn't going to win me any friends either.....
I hate Gisburn.
There. I've said it. I've tried and tried, and I've fallen off more on their blue than I have anywhere else. It's destroyed my confidence, left me hating mountain biking and generally I wish I'd never stepped out of the house this morning.
I appreciate trail grading is a subjective art. I appreciate Gisburn wouldn't exist at all without the love, hard work and attention of a very small and dedicated group of people and I have thanked them repeatedly for that - hell, at least they've bothered with a blue, many trails centres don't even grace us beginners with a nod, instead assuming we're all useless and at best providing us with a green route which involves nothing but fireroads.
Great for families, but not what I'd actually call 'mountain biking'.
Unfortunately, what I think is an appropriate trail to send someone down whose taste of 'mountain biking' has hitherto been nothing but fire roads and what other people feel is appropriate do not match. Or, rather they do not match when wet. And here, right here, we arrive at the fundamental problem with Gisburn in its entirety. It's in East Lancashire. It might be in the Forest of Bowland, that might make it sound quite upper class and fabulous, but frankly mate, it's East Lancs. Lets not get any airs and graces here. Actually, that's another thing but we'll get to that later.
It rains in East Lancs. It rains really rather a lot. So tell me, please do tell me why, we have a trail centre which is slippy as all hell and twice as treacherous, which is disintegrated a little more every time I ride it, in which erosion seems to be providing a never ending challenge to the trail builder, and which rain and wet seem to be the arch enemy both of the trail builders and the riders, in East Lancs?
I've read a lot of threads today on forums, discussing the relative merits or not of Gisburn. Wrong kind of soil, apparently. No flow. Some love it with a complete devotion but others call in on the way from the South to Scotland and end up coming away disappointed and frustrated. In the process of reading these posts, the penny dropped. It's me. It's not the trails. Okay, so the trails really are becoming looser and more eroded every time I ride across them, and in the wet I fall off at a different bit every time - there's no one hotspot, no one nemesis, my focus wanders off and 1/2 inch misjudgement turns into a painful slam into the most unforgiving mixture of sand and rock I've found yet. The mix of tight berms, little humps that as a blue route rider, I'm really not going to attempt jumping, the small rocks which are jutting out everywhere meaning a line, whichever one you pick is full of them, the bits falling off the track at the side, the punishment for 1/2 inch of misplacement meaning sliding off the track.....it's not somewhere to go and regain confidence. Actually it's not somewhere to go to gain confidence. The trail is slippy, the Northshore is slippy and the point where I found a route easier to ride in the snow than in the wet is the point where I just give up and go home. It's not fun. Mountain biking was supposed to be fun.
That's before we've even got to the proportion of 'interesting bits' to fireroad on the blue route. So, this is where I concede defeat. Gisburn is for techheads. People with way more skill than me. People way fitter than me. It is not for me. The reason I fell in love with mountain biking was the speed. Lacks finesse, yes, I know. Lacks challenge, well yes, I know. But nothing on earth, absolutely nothing on earth is better than swooping down switchbacks on beautifully compressed, properly compressed mud, finding your lines, pumping the dips which have been artfully placed with care and precision, railing around berms because you are confident in the trail builders by that point and know you're not going to be punished for commiting 100% to it. I can ride just about well enough to hammer down the side of Electric Blue. I don't jump the little jumps there either but somehow, it's less of an issue there, and it's less of an issue because of the trail quality, the substance of it, and knowing exactly where my wheels are and relying on their footprint to carry me through. I am not good enough to deal with disintegration and crumble on the other side, nor with the tight turns thrown in for fun.
I also know, absolutely know, that I am not alone. There are two camps developing in mountain biking - hell there may well have been two camps right from the start. Actually, no, make that three. There are the people who are comfy in Calderdale. There are the people who grin at Glentress and there are the brave people who stick to the countries bridleways and footpaths, piecing together routes themselves.
I'm a Glentress girl. It's where my heart is. It's where I don't have to throttle back. It's where the magic happens and I can do anything with my bike. I have absolutely nothing against the other camps, nothing at all. As soon as I am fit enough to dig and barrow I'll volunteer at Gisburn because it's important to, because it's local, because they need help, because I can help to build the beautiful shiny playgrounds for other people to play on even if I can't ride them, and it would be ignorant not to at least offer. But somewhere along the line, maybe way way way down the line, I can still dream that one day, there will be a little piece of track with the ethos of Glentress's blue routes built round the corner from me. Until that point, Llandegla is going to be getting an awful lot of my money because there I found a glimpse of the same ethos.
So, the next time someone asks why people love Llandegla, I'll be explaining this - people love Llandegla because it's the closer you can come to flying on wheels without the slog up the M6.
There. I've said it. I've tried and tried, and I've fallen off more on their blue than I have anywhere else. It's destroyed my confidence, left me hating mountain biking and generally I wish I'd never stepped out of the house this morning.
I appreciate trail grading is a subjective art. I appreciate Gisburn wouldn't exist at all without the love, hard work and attention of a very small and dedicated group of people and I have thanked them repeatedly for that - hell, at least they've bothered with a blue, many trails centres don't even grace us beginners with a nod, instead assuming we're all useless and at best providing us with a green route which involves nothing but fireroads.
Great for families, but not what I'd actually call 'mountain biking'.
Unfortunately, what I think is an appropriate trail to send someone down whose taste of 'mountain biking' has hitherto been nothing but fire roads and what other people feel is appropriate do not match. Or, rather they do not match when wet. And here, right here, we arrive at the fundamental problem with Gisburn in its entirety. It's in East Lancashire. It might be in the Forest of Bowland, that might make it sound quite upper class and fabulous, but frankly mate, it's East Lancs. Lets not get any airs and graces here. Actually, that's another thing but we'll get to that later.
It rains in East Lancs. It rains really rather a lot. So tell me, please do tell me why, we have a trail centre which is slippy as all hell and twice as treacherous, which is disintegrated a little more every time I ride it, in which erosion seems to be providing a never ending challenge to the trail builder, and which rain and wet seem to be the arch enemy both of the trail builders and the riders, in East Lancs?
I've read a lot of threads today on forums, discussing the relative merits or not of Gisburn. Wrong kind of soil, apparently. No flow. Some love it with a complete devotion but others call in on the way from the South to Scotland and end up coming away disappointed and frustrated. In the process of reading these posts, the penny dropped. It's me. It's not the trails. Okay, so the trails really are becoming looser and more eroded every time I ride across them, and in the wet I fall off at a different bit every time - there's no one hotspot, no one nemesis, my focus wanders off and 1/2 inch misjudgement turns into a painful slam into the most unforgiving mixture of sand and rock I've found yet. The mix of tight berms, little humps that as a blue route rider, I'm really not going to attempt jumping, the small rocks which are jutting out everywhere meaning a line, whichever one you pick is full of them, the bits falling off the track at the side, the punishment for 1/2 inch of misplacement meaning sliding off the track.....it's not somewhere to go and regain confidence. Actually it's not somewhere to go to gain confidence. The trail is slippy, the Northshore is slippy and the point where I found a route easier to ride in the snow than in the wet is the point where I just give up and go home. It's not fun. Mountain biking was supposed to be fun.
That's before we've even got to the proportion of 'interesting bits' to fireroad on the blue route. So, this is where I concede defeat. Gisburn is for techheads. People with way more skill than me. People way fitter than me. It is not for me. The reason I fell in love with mountain biking was the speed. Lacks finesse, yes, I know. Lacks challenge, well yes, I know. But nothing on earth, absolutely nothing on earth is better than swooping down switchbacks on beautifully compressed, properly compressed mud, finding your lines, pumping the dips which have been artfully placed with care and precision, railing around berms because you are confident in the trail builders by that point and know you're not going to be punished for commiting 100% to it. I can ride just about well enough to hammer down the side of Electric Blue. I don't jump the little jumps there either but somehow, it's less of an issue there, and it's less of an issue because of the trail quality, the substance of it, and knowing exactly where my wheels are and relying on their footprint to carry me through. I am not good enough to deal with disintegration and crumble on the other side, nor with the tight turns thrown in for fun.
I also know, absolutely know, that I am not alone. There are two camps developing in mountain biking - hell there may well have been two camps right from the start. Actually, no, make that three. There are the people who are comfy in Calderdale. There are the people who grin at Glentress and there are the brave people who stick to the countries bridleways and footpaths, piecing together routes themselves.
I'm a Glentress girl. It's where my heart is. It's where I don't have to throttle back. It's where the magic happens and I can do anything with my bike. I have absolutely nothing against the other camps, nothing at all. As soon as I am fit enough to dig and barrow I'll volunteer at Gisburn because it's important to, because it's local, because they need help, because I can help to build the beautiful shiny playgrounds for other people to play on even if I can't ride them, and it would be ignorant not to at least offer. But somewhere along the line, maybe way way way down the line, I can still dream that one day, there will be a little piece of track with the ethos of Glentress's blue routes built round the corner from me. Until that point, Llandegla is going to be getting an awful lot of my money because there I found a glimpse of the same ethos.
So, the next time someone asks why people love Llandegla, I'll be explaining this - people love Llandegla because it's the closer you can come to flying on wheels without the slog up the M6.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Fear of falling
It comes to us all, I think. So I've been told and so I believe. The moment when you finally appreciate what it is you're actually doing. The moment when reality knocks you fist first, where you suddenly realise that all that's between you and A & E is your own skill and concentration. Then the doubts set in, you start throttling back, you start hesitating, you watch your friends disappear into the distance troubled by no such qualms and suddenly you're on your own with your doubts and fears.
So what have I learned?
Not talking about being afraid of something is worse than being afraid of something. It is not irrational to be afraid of flinging yourself down the side of a hill at speeds sometimes exceeding 15mph. It's not irrational to find cornering on slippery planks of wood in the rain a little daunting. It's certainly not ridiculous to have a moment of self doubt when you're hanging so far off the back of the bike the saddle starts to become an issue. None of these are normal states of affairs, none of these are things that the general populace would ever consider doing.
Which is not to encourage elitism, because that is not the point. I am no better than anyone else because I happen to have found a form of exercise, after many years of trying, which I enjoy. No, it's more a case of not disappearing into the rationale of the mountain biking world which assumes all these things are situation normal, where the default is speed and attacking everything that comes at you. Little is said in the mountain biking press of how to deal with a bad day. Loss of mojo is rarely acknowledged. Perhaps it reflects that this is a blog written by a girl that it is even mentioned here.
I am honest about many things. I don't see the point in not being. I write this blog to share things and sharing things means sharing the negative as well as the positive. We don't always live in a shiny world where everything clicks, everything comes naturally and we are all freeriding backflipping superstars. Lord knows I'd love to be, but I don't think, somehow I ever will be. That's okay. I don't have to be comfy with my wheels off the ground to go ride some of the most beautiful countryside in the world. I don't have to backflip my way down the side of any hills if I don't want to. I don't have to be the first to the bottom on every ride I go on. I don't have to always be fearless.
Ultimately, the crux of the issue, the horrible fear, is that I don't ever want anyone to look at me and think 'she's doing well for a girl'. I so desperately want mountain biking to be the one place in the world where that doesn't matter. I don't think it does matter, on reflection, to anyone but me. I think the only person thinking 'heh I cleared that without dabbing, not bad for a girl' is me. So I guess this is me kicking my own behind into touch. No more thinking about gender. It's irrelevant. No more trying to prove something because everyone is judging the fat girl. They're not. No one else matters except me. When I'm out mountain biking I am allowed to be selfish, I am allowed to think only of myself, I am allowed to go at my own pace both up and down hill. I am allowed to stop and pant, I am allowed to stop and look at the view. I am allowed to combine the two if I damn well want to. I am allowed to fall off and yelp a bit, I am allowed to go a bit squicky if there's lots of blood. I am allowed to go all maternal when I trip over someone in pain and hurting, I am allowed to enthuse at people randomly. None of these things are illegal, none of these things hurt anyone else. All of these things are things everyone else does too, I am just so busy feeling self conscious that I just don't see it.
You might have noticed that this post is very much all about me. Selfish. But in being so afraid of failing, I was. I think I can stop that now, get back on my bike and just go and ride with no expectations of myself or anyone else. Back to simplicity. Push the pedals, chill the hell out, be friendly and just stop stressing.
So what have I learned?
Not talking about being afraid of something is worse than being afraid of something. It is not irrational to be afraid of flinging yourself down the side of a hill at speeds sometimes exceeding 15mph. It's not irrational to find cornering on slippery planks of wood in the rain a little daunting. It's certainly not ridiculous to have a moment of self doubt when you're hanging so far off the back of the bike the saddle starts to become an issue. None of these are normal states of affairs, none of these are things that the general populace would ever consider doing.
Which is not to encourage elitism, because that is not the point. I am no better than anyone else because I happen to have found a form of exercise, after many years of trying, which I enjoy. No, it's more a case of not disappearing into the rationale of the mountain biking world which assumes all these things are situation normal, where the default is speed and attacking everything that comes at you. Little is said in the mountain biking press of how to deal with a bad day. Loss of mojo is rarely acknowledged. Perhaps it reflects that this is a blog written by a girl that it is even mentioned here.
I am honest about many things. I don't see the point in not being. I write this blog to share things and sharing things means sharing the negative as well as the positive. We don't always live in a shiny world where everything clicks, everything comes naturally and we are all freeriding backflipping superstars. Lord knows I'd love to be, but I don't think, somehow I ever will be. That's okay. I don't have to be comfy with my wheels off the ground to go ride some of the most beautiful countryside in the world. I don't have to backflip my way down the side of any hills if I don't want to. I don't have to be the first to the bottom on every ride I go on. I don't have to always be fearless.
Ultimately, the crux of the issue, the horrible fear, is that I don't ever want anyone to look at me and think 'she's doing well for a girl'. I so desperately want mountain biking to be the one place in the world where that doesn't matter. I don't think it does matter, on reflection, to anyone but me. I think the only person thinking 'heh I cleared that without dabbing, not bad for a girl' is me. So I guess this is me kicking my own behind into touch. No more thinking about gender. It's irrelevant. No more trying to prove something because everyone is judging the fat girl. They're not. No one else matters except me. When I'm out mountain biking I am allowed to be selfish, I am allowed to think only of myself, I am allowed to go at my own pace both up and down hill. I am allowed to stop and pant, I am allowed to stop and look at the view. I am allowed to combine the two if I damn well want to. I am allowed to fall off and yelp a bit, I am allowed to go a bit squicky if there's lots of blood. I am allowed to go all maternal when I trip over someone in pain and hurting, I am allowed to enthuse at people randomly. None of these things are illegal, none of these things hurt anyone else. All of these things are things everyone else does too, I am just so busy feeling self conscious that I just don't see it.
You might have noticed that this post is very much all about me. Selfish. But in being so afraid of failing, I was. I think I can stop that now, get back on my bike and just go and ride with no expectations of myself or anyone else. Back to simplicity. Push the pedals, chill the hell out, be friendly and just stop stressing.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Ways to get your girlfriend riding a bike?
The title should actually be, ways to ensure that your girlfriend will never ever ever get on a bike ever again. The following is from personal first hand experience, both from what I've seen and what I've heard, what's been said to me and what's been said to others. It is not a criticism - think of it instead as a little bit of insight into the way the female mind works. Well, actually, it's the way my mind works, but I know from speaking to at least one other bike riding of the female shape that the below holds true for them too. And so, with an attempt at minimal ranting and irritation, here follows some bits of advice:
- I don't care about the details of what I am riding. Your girlfriend may be different and may be naturally mechanically minded. I am not. Lots of other women are not. LBS's are full, I suspect, of bikes belonging to similar people to me. I am aware of how to maintain my bike. I am smart enough to tell you what is wrong with my bike and the symptoms of the wrongness. I am not interested enough in cogs, cassettes and allan keys to ascertain the cause of the problem. I will nod nicely when you tell me said cause, but it will be more in the vein of 'thank god someone in this household knows what they're doing' rather than 'cool, next time I can fix it myself'. I will fight over constructing flat packed furniture, I assert my right to have my own screwdriver which you will never touch, but bikes are different and complicated and I just can't get my head around them. Mea culpa.
- My bike is my bike. Deriding my choice of decals, colour schemes or the hours agonising over which colour of bottle holder will irritate me. Riding a bike is by necessity a muddy/dusty and dirty uncolourful experience some days. Let me have some small joy in customising my bike so it's mine.
- If you actually get a girl to put her leg over a saddle, choose the bike attached to that saddle with care. Taking her to a trail centre and hiring an already ridden to death with no care at all mountain bike which is probably the wrong size and shape and which no amount of tweaking is going to fix is not going to help. She will come out of the experience with a bad back, cramping feet and excessive irritation at the fact that you seem to control your beautifully set up bike effortlessly, whilst she has been wrestling with a pig for the last 2 hours. If you can, borrow another girls bike. Some of us are nice like that. Failing that, ask a local bike shop if you can demo a nice bike - as a result of their care and attention in a few days time she might well be returning to buy that demo bike from them and you get a girlfriend/wife who's at least had a taste of what riding a properly set up bike is going to be like.
- Don't fuss. Stop it. She might be a little nervous (I actually think probably quite a lot nervous) as she is stepping into your territory. Your world. You are comfortable in it, with its politics, community, terminology and etiquette. She is not. Don't overwhelm her with it all at once. Tell her the basics, practice standing up on the pedals in the car park, explain feathering brakes, get her to go around and around and around in circles switching up and down gears until she is comfy with what lever causes which effect. Take the time in the car park to familiarise and you wont be returning to that same car park with a limping swearing girlfriend vowing never to get on a stupid bike ever again.
- Be patient. Endlessly. I really do mean this. This isn't a lifelong request, you're allowed to lose your rag at us 4 rides in when we accidentally switch up a gear before a steep incline and fall sideways. That's okay. It is absolutely not okay on our first ride when we are focusing on 17 different things and had a mild flap and got it wrong. Pick us up, dust us down, wrap any wounds gently, give hugs, don't make a fuss and walk us to the top of the incline and pack us off again. Oh, and when we do it right next time, mark it. Note it and celebrate it. It's small fry when you're used to ripping around berms at 15mph, it's not small fry to us.
- We didn't spend childhoods on Grifters, nine times out of ten. Nor are we familiar with bikes with pegs sticking out of the back wheel. It's not as natural as breathing to us and we don't have the background you do. Mention it more than 5 times on the first ride out and we're going to start muttering under our breathes about 'we all have to start somewhere'. We do. Have to start somewhere. This is the start, don't make it the end with careless chatter which might seem innocuous to you but will come across as a bit soul destroying for the person next to you trying their damned hardest to keep up with your perfectly tones calves.
- Don't leap in head first. Red routes, if you've only just got on a bike for the first time in 10-15 years are not the best introduction to bike handling in a safe and comfortable environment. Take the hit and ride a Green. Maybe even a Blue if fitness isn't an issue. Scotlands Blue routes are about the best in the country for introducing someone to the joys of mountain biking without terrifying them out of their tiny little minds. It's about the speed of incoming obstacles, it's about putting someone off with information overload, it's about putting someone off by sending them over the handlbars when they panic on their first berm. Your first ride stays with you for a long time if you fall in love with mountain biking, it needs to be memorable for all the right reasons and not the wrong ones.
- Leave your mates at home. No, seriously. You might not know you're doing that competitive thing, racing each other, firing off into the distance, chatting about places your girlfriend didn't go with you to or stag nights or whatever. But you are. Trust me, you are. Leave them at home, and turn your first ride out with your girlfriend into something special. Something memorable. Point out the smell of the pine needles baking in the sun. Point out the bird calls, and the sound as a powerful bird flaps its winds on takeoff. If it's the right thing to do, take a camera or binoculars. Keep an eye out for squirrels, take time out on a quiet bit of the trail and get her to close her eyes and tell you what she hears. Find the things which will bring her back, whether it's the lack of mobile phone signal, the camraderie, the friendliness, the views or the silence. Biking is not all about aggression, sometimes it's about the space inbetween.
- Treat the obstacles as problem solving. Ask her to solve it. Find a big berm, get her to watch you ride it. Do it again and ask her what she's noticed you're doing. Then explain the technique in detal, catching anything she's missed, and ride it again. Then ask her to ride it. Then again. And again. Repetition leads to familiarity and takes the sting out of the unknown. Don't be patronising about it, don't make her feel like you're doing her a favour, instead you're communicating the skill to do something you love doing that makes you buzz and fly, passing it on to someone else who will feel exactly the same way once they've conquered it too.
- Do not make her feel like she's the B team. She's not. She's hopefully the most important person in your life and you're sharing one of the most important things you do in yours, with her. That's not B team, that's A team. Don't suggest she rides the Blue on her own while you disapear onto the Red. This is not the time for that. If you want your girlfriend to come riding with you, it's going to take time, and a weekly commitment and some effort. Suggesting she rides on her own is going to turn the whole experience into one of isolation, not teamwork. She will feel demoralised because she will feel like teaching her is too much trouble and you'd rather be off having fun blatting down the trails with your mates and that she is in the way. She wont come again, I can guarantee that.
- Send her on a skills course if she comes back to the car park with a grin on her face. In the same way you would probably not teach her to drive from never driven before to taking her test, this is the same. There are things you cannot show her, things that will be easier understood from someone who does nothing but teach people to ride all day. A specific Womans course will.....help. I don't want to go into the arguments here, but see the point above about taking her out with your mates on her first ride. It wont end well. Give her a space to learn in where she can make mistakes comfortably, where she knows she is in safe hands, where the terrain will be explained and patience will be endless. Give her the experience of riding with people of exactly the same level as her. There is absolutely nothing like it for building confidence and giving you a feeling of belonging to a group of people who love mountain biking for all the same reasons you do.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Mental self
In discussions with someone a few weeks ago, who asked me to sell biking to them, I realised that things like stress relief and a sense of empowerment are not high on the list of others priorities, because they are not me, and do not have the background which I have.
Today I had a little bit of an epiphany. I am not the woman who tentatively climbed on a bike 2.5 years ago at Center Parcs. I am not even the woman I was at Christmas this year. For a start, I am finally comfortable with calling myself a woman, though I still prefer the term girl because I am not married and am not a mother and for some stupid reason those two things are closely tied. But somewhere along the way, I have grown up.
I have always been a little bit shy. Well, actually, scrap that, lets be honest here, I have been a really quite a lot shy for a very long time. I have also, mostly, been timid, never voiced opinions because I never had them because I always hovered in the middle, never spoken up when I knew absolutely something was wrong or someone had come to the wrong conclusion, and certainly never sung my own praises. I was a girl born to a man who made no secret of his wish for a boy, but I also was a girl who was rigorously and repeatedly told children should be seen and not heard.
I think I forgot somewhere that children grow up. I forgot that we are not eternally children and that at some point, some indefinable point, it is okay as a woman, as a person, as an intelligent person, to be seen and be heard. I have spent my life thus far carefully crafting the art of keeping below the parapet. I believe, quite honestly, I did a damn fine job.
What a thing to be proud of. The ability to be invisible.
So here's the thing. I ride my bike for many reasons and fitness and losing weight is perhaps the obvious one when you see me out on a trail. But you will also see a really bloody big grin. So the bit at the top of the hill when I'm panting and recovering might be a bad time, but mostly that grin is there. It comes from a lot of things. Some of these things are specific to being female, I think, though I might be wrong and if I am, please do tell me, it's important this I think if I ever come to be sitting in front of a group of teenage girls explaining how mountain biking changed my sense of self so dramatically.
Girls don't get muddy. They wear dresses and play with Barbies. This wasn't my experience but only because I had a mother who hill walked for many years and understood. For others, this is their experience. Girls don't do mechanics. Don't fettle. Don't go fast. Don't do Maths, don't do Science, don't geek......endless don'ts. If you are unfortunate, for example, to have parents who only ever focus on what it is not possible to do, it can be very difficult to understand the space where the thing is that you are allowed to do.
I'm 33. It's taken this long to find something which gives me something that you can't buy off a shelf in a neat little package of bows and pink ribbon. It's called empowerment. It's called believing in yourself. It's called self confidence, self esteem, self belief and self knowledge. Riding my bike has ramped up all those things to a level where finally I do have an opinion. because I am confident in having one. I do speak up and challenge others preconceptions and sometimes misconceptions. I sit and discuss and listen and query still, but I also form a result of all that input and am not afraid to write down the outcome, not afraid to commit myself to something any more. How on earth could you ever be afraid of something as simple as having an opinion when you're riding your bike down 1.5 feet drop offs? Perspective is a beautiful thing, and biking has given it back to me. How on earth could you ever be afraid of public speaking when you've zoomed along a track covered in roots dodging off in all directions? How can you be worried about whether you've worn the right shoes, when you've fought your way through a rainstorm and a headwind and arrived back at the car park safe and sound through nothing but sheer determination to maintain body heat?
Riding my bike has given me a reasonably safe space to play. I can push boundaries, bit by little bit and explore the edges of my fitness and skill level and with a bit of care and some nouse, never come a cropper. I can make decisions faster than I ever thought possible. I can fly, sometimes. It's just not possible to remain timid and shy and unsure of yourself after doing all those things, it really isn't.
So I think this is the point. The point where I am no longer allowed to refer to myself as shy, or timid, or lacking in self belief or confidence or knowledge. I know myself. I know who I am. I know this more surely than I have ever done and whilst things will continue to improve, I think this is the point where I draw a line under all the things I have been told I couldn't be, but I now am.
I am becoming everything I always wanted to be but never thought I could. And biking? Biking gave me wings, and now it's time to fly. Time, perhaps, to pass it on, however that may transpire. Time to share the magic with other people, time to explain, time to be honest, time to open up a little.Time to just be me. The parapet has been firebombed, frankly, and I don't think there's any going back now.
Today I had a little bit of an epiphany. I am not the woman who tentatively climbed on a bike 2.5 years ago at Center Parcs. I am not even the woman I was at Christmas this year. For a start, I am finally comfortable with calling myself a woman, though I still prefer the term girl because I am not married and am not a mother and for some stupid reason those two things are closely tied. But somewhere along the way, I have grown up.
I have always been a little bit shy. Well, actually, scrap that, lets be honest here, I have been a really quite a lot shy for a very long time. I have also, mostly, been timid, never voiced opinions because I never had them because I always hovered in the middle, never spoken up when I knew absolutely something was wrong or someone had come to the wrong conclusion, and certainly never sung my own praises. I was a girl born to a man who made no secret of his wish for a boy, but I also was a girl who was rigorously and repeatedly told children should be seen and not heard.
I think I forgot somewhere that children grow up. I forgot that we are not eternally children and that at some point, some indefinable point, it is okay as a woman, as a person, as an intelligent person, to be seen and be heard. I have spent my life thus far carefully crafting the art of keeping below the parapet. I believe, quite honestly, I did a damn fine job.
What a thing to be proud of. The ability to be invisible.
So here's the thing. I ride my bike for many reasons and fitness and losing weight is perhaps the obvious one when you see me out on a trail. But you will also see a really bloody big grin. So the bit at the top of the hill when I'm panting and recovering might be a bad time, but mostly that grin is there. It comes from a lot of things. Some of these things are specific to being female, I think, though I might be wrong and if I am, please do tell me, it's important this I think if I ever come to be sitting in front of a group of teenage girls explaining how mountain biking changed my sense of self so dramatically.
Girls don't get muddy. They wear dresses and play with Barbies. This wasn't my experience but only because I had a mother who hill walked for many years and understood. For others, this is their experience. Girls don't do mechanics. Don't fettle. Don't go fast. Don't do Maths, don't do Science, don't geek......endless don'ts. If you are unfortunate, for example, to have parents who only ever focus on what it is not possible to do, it can be very difficult to understand the space where the thing is that you are allowed to do.
I'm 33. It's taken this long to find something which gives me something that you can't buy off a shelf in a neat little package of bows and pink ribbon. It's called empowerment. It's called believing in yourself. It's called self confidence, self esteem, self belief and self knowledge. Riding my bike has ramped up all those things to a level where finally I do have an opinion. because I am confident in having one. I do speak up and challenge others preconceptions and sometimes misconceptions. I sit and discuss and listen and query still, but I also form a result of all that input and am not afraid to write down the outcome, not afraid to commit myself to something any more. How on earth could you ever be afraid of something as simple as having an opinion when you're riding your bike down 1.5 feet drop offs? Perspective is a beautiful thing, and biking has given it back to me. How on earth could you ever be afraid of public speaking when you've zoomed along a track covered in roots dodging off in all directions? How can you be worried about whether you've worn the right shoes, when you've fought your way through a rainstorm and a headwind and arrived back at the car park safe and sound through nothing but sheer determination to maintain body heat?
Riding my bike has given me a reasonably safe space to play. I can push boundaries, bit by little bit and explore the edges of my fitness and skill level and with a bit of care and some nouse, never come a cropper. I can make decisions faster than I ever thought possible. I can fly, sometimes. It's just not possible to remain timid and shy and unsure of yourself after doing all those things, it really isn't.
So I think this is the point. The point where I am no longer allowed to refer to myself as shy, or timid, or lacking in self belief or confidence or knowledge. I know myself. I know who I am. I know this more surely than I have ever done and whilst things will continue to improve, I think this is the point where I draw a line under all the things I have been told I couldn't be, but I now am.
I am becoming everything I always wanted to be but never thought I could. And biking? Biking gave me wings, and now it's time to fly. Time, perhaps, to pass it on, however that may transpire. Time to share the magic with other people, time to explain, time to be honest, time to open up a little.Time to just be me. The parapet has been firebombed, frankly, and I don't think there's any going back now.
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Playing in the sand
I'm a bit of a geek. So I'm going to use a geek analogy to explain why towpaths have their place in my little biking world, and why I'll tolerate others disdain and admit to it in public.
Geeks tend to use sandpit environments to test things out. These environments can be training copies of databases used to train new users on, they can be staging platforms used to roll out a big change to some software before it goes live, they can be exact replicas of the live software, or they can be vague approximations of them. You get the idea. A safe space to rollout some complicated changes in an environment where, if something goes wrong, things can be rolled back and taken out of the system, without affecting end users who cannot afford the interuption and downtime.
Towpaths are where I learnt to do a number of things on my bike. Not falling into the canal is the obvious one. When I first started riding my bike, I was so wobbly that I couldn't look behind me without veering off in a different direction. You don't tend to need to look behind you when riding on a towpath - it's the obstacles in front of your wheel such as dog droppings and children running around randomly which are more of a danger. Not being able to look behind you on a road, to check whether a car is coming before making a right turn, is a slightly more lethal issue.
They're also where I learnt to ride my tyres down singletrack twice the width of my tyre. They're where I've set myself my own little goals, when the path has left the tarmac behind and become a mass of dried in ruts, where I've tried repeatedly to keep my tyres in the rut and not wander out of them. The penalty for wandering out of it is nothing more than a slighty back wheel skitter, on that towpath. The punishment on a log path the same width would likely be a little more severe.
I also learnt to manual and deal with small step ups. There's a motorway bridge near the start of where we join it, with some big concrete two by fours spanning the path. There's no avoiding them. So instead of getting off and walking, I tried approaching them in different ways, with no danger of injury, testing different weight balances, testing how much downforce to create, working out how comfortable I was approaching them at slow and high speeds, and gradually getting to the point where getting over them didn't warrant a second thought. Far better to play around there, where the path widens to the allow for the motorway bridge above, then to block a red trail or a local bridleway practising the same thing over and over again and getting in everyones way.
Where I'm going with this, you see, is that towpaths have their place, and they are my sandpit. The first thing I did when I got my new bike was take it for a blast down the towpath. We know it well enough now to know where the dogwalkers and canalboat owners loiter and park, and where they don't. We know which bits its safe to slam along, and which bits are suited to more of a gentle pootle. We know where the mile of compressions is and are using it to learn how not to peddle, instead using the ground beneath us to conserve momentum and deliver us happily to the aforementioned motorway bridge.
If I rode nothing but towpaths, I would be a 2 dimensional rider who didn't step outside of comfort zone.....perhaps. Or perhaps I would be a commuter, using my bike as transport instead of merely a toy. A towpath ride is what you choose to make of it - a safe passageway from point A to point B, or a series of challenges both physical and the ones you create, a sequence of tests and obstacles which are as difficult or as easy as you make them.
Towpaths are my sandpit. They're where I go to play, in safety, where I go to learn the limits of my bike, where I've learnt all the skills which I am now, with hesitancy and tentativeness, taking out into the big wide world and using on our local bridleways. I am less afraid now, of those bridleways, because I am assured that I can deal with what that track might throw at me. I am more familiar with my bike because I have played and pushed and befriended it.
Don't knock the towpaths. They are exactly what you make of them. Just mind the midgies.
Geeks tend to use sandpit environments to test things out. These environments can be training copies of databases used to train new users on, they can be staging platforms used to roll out a big change to some software before it goes live, they can be exact replicas of the live software, or they can be vague approximations of them. You get the idea. A safe space to rollout some complicated changes in an environment where, if something goes wrong, things can be rolled back and taken out of the system, without affecting end users who cannot afford the interuption and downtime.
Towpaths are where I learnt to do a number of things on my bike. Not falling into the canal is the obvious one. When I first started riding my bike, I was so wobbly that I couldn't look behind me without veering off in a different direction. You don't tend to need to look behind you when riding on a towpath - it's the obstacles in front of your wheel such as dog droppings and children running around randomly which are more of a danger. Not being able to look behind you on a road, to check whether a car is coming before making a right turn, is a slightly more lethal issue.
They're also where I learnt to ride my tyres down singletrack twice the width of my tyre. They're where I've set myself my own little goals, when the path has left the tarmac behind and become a mass of dried in ruts, where I've tried repeatedly to keep my tyres in the rut and not wander out of them. The penalty for wandering out of it is nothing more than a slighty back wheel skitter, on that towpath. The punishment on a log path the same width would likely be a little more severe.
I also learnt to manual and deal with small step ups. There's a motorway bridge near the start of where we join it, with some big concrete two by fours spanning the path. There's no avoiding them. So instead of getting off and walking, I tried approaching them in different ways, with no danger of injury, testing different weight balances, testing how much downforce to create, working out how comfortable I was approaching them at slow and high speeds, and gradually getting to the point where getting over them didn't warrant a second thought. Far better to play around there, where the path widens to the allow for the motorway bridge above, then to block a red trail or a local bridleway practising the same thing over and over again and getting in everyones way.
Where I'm going with this, you see, is that towpaths have their place, and they are my sandpit. The first thing I did when I got my new bike was take it for a blast down the towpath. We know it well enough now to know where the dogwalkers and canalboat owners loiter and park, and where they don't. We know which bits its safe to slam along, and which bits are suited to more of a gentle pootle. We know where the mile of compressions is and are using it to learn how not to peddle, instead using the ground beneath us to conserve momentum and deliver us happily to the aforementioned motorway bridge.
If I rode nothing but towpaths, I would be a 2 dimensional rider who didn't step outside of comfort zone.....perhaps. Or perhaps I would be a commuter, using my bike as transport instead of merely a toy. A towpath ride is what you choose to make of it - a safe passageway from point A to point B, or a series of challenges both physical and the ones you create, a sequence of tests and obstacles which are as difficult or as easy as you make them.
Towpaths are my sandpit. They're where I go to play, in safety, where I go to learn the limits of my bike, where I've learnt all the skills which I am now, with hesitancy and tentativeness, taking out into the big wide world and using on our local bridleways. I am less afraid now, of those bridleways, because I am assured that I can deal with what that track might throw at me. I am more familiar with my bike because I have played and pushed and befriended it.
Don't knock the towpaths. They are exactly what you make of them. Just mind the midgies.
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