The struggle of starting back up

Many sports are a simple sweat equity equation, where more practice will deepen your skills and raise your performance. One sport where this feels so readily apparent is in cycling and mountain biking. Unlike whitewater paddling, where you can miss time on the water without losing much of your skill, time off the bike will kick you in the ass, and this is exactly what happened to me last weekend. 

While living in Madison, Wisconsin, I found cycling to be a profound way to spend time with the long rolling lands of the driftless region.  Rides through the rolling hills surrounding Mt Horeb, New Glarus, and Paoli lent themselves to rapid skill and physicality progression. Moving later to the foothills of Appalachia, I discovered Mountain Biking as a perfect combination of flow and fitness, something I immediately fell for.  But with more weekends spent on the water rather than on the trail, it has been nearly 4 months since my last mountain bike ride.

That is, until Sunday, when a beautiful 70-degree South Carolina Day combined with a lack of water in the rivers pushed me to get back on the bike at the Saluda Confluence Recreation Area. 

The result was a roughly six-mile humbling that nearly had me walking my Trek Stache up some of the steeper gradients. The downhill was not much better as I was unable to open it up, heating up my brake rotors on nearly every descent.  While disappointing, this outing was a lesson in progression and expectations. While I did not have a strong ride, I still reaped much of the benefit that brought me to the sport, spending time in the woods working hard and leaving with a clearer mind than I went in. Ultimately, when taking on a variety of sports, focusing on what each one brings to your life helps add depth to difficult outings.