I had my worst choke for a while today, mountain biking in the Kilpatrick Hills. Cycling up the hill, I dropped down a gear on a steep part of the climb, only for my chain to drop off into the wheel and jam and me to stack it sideways. A few minutes of turning the wheel and tugging the chain got it free, but now everyone was past me and I was off the back again (we'd been waiting for a couple of people to arrive at the bottom of the hill, but me and one other had started up as I know I'm fairly slow up the hills just now - severe lack of cycling this year is a big part of that). Once I get in a position like that I start to rush to want to catch up, which adds stress to a body that has already had a big dump of adrenaline, and as I cycled up to the next steep bit, my bottle just completly cracked. I looked at the hill and just had visions of me tumbling again because the gears would slip or the front would loose traction or I'd fall back or one of several other unpleasant ideas, so I pedalled across the path, unclipped and stepped off.
The top of this section of climb wasn't too far, so I pushed the bike, telling myself that once I saw the guys again I'd knock it on the head and go home, but at the top of the rise, the road just carried on up & around the corner, so everyone was out of site, so I just gave up and sat on the very inviting rock beside the track. I called ahead to the group to let them know I was turning back so that they wouldn't wait for me and I sat there and let myself feel the fear, anxiety and whatever other emotions that are in there and instead of always keeping clamping them down, I eased off a little and let them out allowing myself to cry for a while. For a guy that trys to keep emotions in check its not the easiest of things to admit to, but its part of the process of me trying to free myself of the baggage I'm carrying.
The last few weekends of mountain biking, I feel like I'm coming to an understanding about myself, in particular with respect to the fear I feel when on a bike. I'm too uptight, to tense, to scared to let loose and accept that I can't control everything, and unable to trust that my body and equipment can handle what its getting asked to do. I have the same thing with skiiing and snowboarding - during a week learning to snowboard I gave myself concussion, when I was standing up too tall turning onto my toe edge and fell backwards without a helmet. The nerves/anxiety/whatever mean that I was tensing up and pulling back and up, so I was never going to be able to flow into a turn like I needed to; equally I could never commit to putting my weight onto my leading foot, it felt counter intuitive to me and I put too much weight onto my back footand would lose control and would stack it. I think I do similar things here, I'm too tense, so I maybe even pull slightly on the handle bars which can't help, I'm hunching with the nerves and not keeping the strong core locked in and I'm possibly keeping my centre of gravity too far back which isn't going to help matters.
But for all this, when I saw two mountain bikers going past me up the hill (after I had lain in the grass for 10 minutes or so admiring the view of the Erskine Bridge), one of them pushing his bike even though he clearly looked like a decent biker, I figured I may as well at least go to the top before coming back down.
I reached the next gate while they were still getting through so I stopped and chatted to them for a bit. My idea of going back down the same hill was pointed out as being incredibly dull and instead I was pointed in the direction of some very easy single track down to Milton, so off I went - a rolling track beside a wee loch, dropping in through some woods, off track (and pushing the bike) down between some trees, then out into the open hill sound where I found myself relaxing a bit more and managed to get a bit of flow going. I still stopped more than necessary and going through mud made me edgy, but by the bottom I was smiling. Quite a bit actually.
From there I dropped down into Milton then cycled along the cycle path back to Old Kilpatrick chatting to a pensioner who'd been out up in the hills too.
I also take myself back to when I was snowboarding, and instructor the final group meeting at the end of the week telling me that I have guts - I'd got back out there over the next few days and kept at it and even though I had to sit out the last day (3 days after the concusion), I'd given it a good shot (and it was my knees that really stopped me - I just couldn't get comfortable on the board and skiing came much easier to me a couple of years later). And when I take the pressure back off myself, I can drive myself on and keep going. I think that is one of the keys though, taking the pressure off, so much of the pressure I put there myself, worrying about people waiting for me and all the things like that.
So the first thing I should probably do is get myself a decent pair of flat pedals - on the climbs I appreciate being able to use the full crank circle, but it feels just now like I'm trapped on as soon as anything starts to go wrong, so I need to free myself from that & get some more enjoyment. Next I'm going to change to the Adamo saddle off my road bike (or get a mtb one) as it is way comfier to me for anatomical reasons (I shan't go into that for you right now, but if you ever have issues with man bits and saddles, get an Adamo) and I think that discomfort is keeping me too far back when I'm climbing. Finally, I'm going to keep at it. There are moments of complete and total freedom and fun on the bike, and I found a few of them on the Crag circular route, particularly dropping down to Overtoun House; with more practice I can take those little moments and join them up into one big moment of ear to ear grinning.
