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Jim Christensen's avatar

This article strikes a particularly nerve with me. A nerve heavily frayed from many hours in the seat of a mountain bike. It all started innocently enough. A friend loaned me his old bike and showed me the local trails. Having lived in southern California all my life I was mesmerized by this previously hidden world. So many trails, so much beautiful scenery and views. Plus my fitness hit all time highs. But then “it” crept in. That insidious feeling of memetic desire. My friend would say things like “hey Jim, you should get the Strava app. You can post your ride and see how you rank”. Or “hey Jim, I heard about these 24 hour mountain bike races, we should start a team”. And so it went until we stumbled on the “vision quest”. This is a punishing 55 mile mountain bike race dubbed one of the 10 most grueling events in the world. I never did the race. The training was sucking away all the joy I had been experiencing as a mediocre rider. Going hard felt like the right thing to do. But ultimately I stopped riding entirely and haven’t been back in years. Lesson learned for me was enjoy the thing for the sake of the thing. No need to turn everything into a competition.

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Erin Webreck's avatar

Yes to all of this, but especially the part about early morning barfiness. Please report back if you figure out what this is! Are we just dehydrated??

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