Think smooth, not fast. Hinge low. Drop heels. Look ahead. Stance. Momentum is your friend. But be aware, sometimes even the tightest friendships hit the rocks. Take a deep breath. Sit and spin, or rise and grind but remember your saddle goes down before you stand up. Push a harder gear. Dance on your pedals. Attitude is everything. Bending the spoon with your mind only works when you realize there is no spoon.
Talking about riding janky North Shore terrain is easy. Translating skills that are now instinctual back into individual actions to be shared can be a very rewarding way to improve ourselves. Like trying to rewrite a book from memory, when sharing these skills it’s always easy to leave out little details. It’s funny how often someone will be talking about a thing they do on their bike and I’ll think, consciously for the first time, ‘wait, I do that too.’
*Photos by Hardtail.Life Meg.
I’m standing on at the top of a steep rock section waiting my turn to roll-in. I’ve done it many times but I like to just get it out of the way and that’s not an option today as a couple of riders in front of me need a hot minute to sort their sh*t out. Ugh, starting to feel a bit nervous. Then a bit more nervous. The butterflies are amassing.
I reach down, instinctively, pull out my water bottle and take a deep draw. Calm washes over me. And then, looking accusingly at my water bottle, I realize what I’ve done. Just the other day my friend Gregg was telling me that he finds a drink of water is just the thing to settle him in before trying a section of trail that scares him. It makes a huge difference, for him. I was a bit dismissive at the time but here I am watering my own confidence. Inception? No, it turns out I’ve been subconsciously doing it for years too and we’re not alone with the H2O-and-go.
Claire’s lined up to hit a rock feature that’s been giving her grief for a few months. One of those real confidence killers that she’s captured a few times but never with enough confidence to say she owns it. It’s easy to pop up and over it on my bike thanks to the 29″ front wheel and the momentum I can create. For a sixty pound kid with 24″ hoops it’s significantly harder.
She comes in fast and well balanced but stalls on the up-and-over and I help her dismount and get her bike turned around. She’s frowning. I tell her it looked great, just one more turn of the pedals and she’ll pop through perfectly. She lines up again, but she looks more nervous than her first run-in. “Get low,” I say. Wait, wait a second. “Get l’eau and then get low! Have a drink of water before you take off.”
She pulls out her bottle, takes a big swig, returns it to her cage, and then leaps on the pedals just like round one, only this time there’s zero nervous energy in the air. Just a calm determination and the not-enough-‘o’s-in-smooth riding result she was looking for. “YES!” she hoots happily.
Does a gulp or two of water really make that much of a difference to confidence when palms are sweaty and nerves are fraying? It’ll cost nothing to find out if that’s the case for you.