~ back to the ol' drawing board ~

At present, I am working on a mental hump that I need to overcome. If memory serves you well, you should recall a mountain biking accident that I sustained a while ago. And how, since then, I've been a bit tense on the downhills. Well, if you comprehended what you read in my last post, you should have gathered that there are a few things about my new bike that need to be tweaked. The breaks, for one, and the pedals, for two. These two things, my tension on downhills and those items needing tweaking on my bike, were directly responsible for my having crashed, not once, not twice, but THREE times on my mountain bike ride yesterday. Unfortunately, the majority of my injury was mental, and not physical. Physical injury is relatively easy to heal, at least with proper treatment and whatever. Mental injury, not so much.

Anyway, I had resolved that I didn't want to discuss it at all, because I just feel so severely lamed out and disappointed in myself. But, these people around me seem to have noticed that I am not my normal sunshiny self, and have pressed to know what is the matter. Also, I think I just need to get it off my chest, as this might take some time to get over....and I know how important it is for all of you people out there to understand the minutia of my existence.

So, yesterday, I spent the whole day being excited about taking my bike out on her second ride. I rode one of my favorite routes, Shane's to Three Bears and down Central Ridge. The climb was great, I absolutely LOVE the bike.

FALL NUMBER ONE: I was riding down the trail that drops Shane's into Rocky Canyon Road. There's a sudden technical section of the trail that always gives me a hard time. I had to stop and walk my bike on this. When I got back on the bike, I couldn't get my right cleat clipped into the pedal. Shame on me, this was clearly taking up more of my concentration than was the trail. So, I tipped over and flew down the side of the mountain. This has always been one of my greatest fears. Amazingly, I sustained little damage. I scuffed up my right forearm and my right shin. I had landed in a sandy section with a lot of sage brush. I had sand everywhere, in my shoes, in my shorts, in my mouth. I was also wearing a lot of sunscreen and had been sweating, so the sand stuck to every inch of my person. Sand also got imbedded in my water bottles, which I found rather unpleasant. Also, the scratchy pokey sage brush...I am allergic to sage brush, and I've got tiny welts on my skin to demonstrate that fact. At the same time, for having fallen down the face of a mountain, I felt that I was pretty lucky to not be really hurt. I don't remember a thing from my physics classes, but based on my experience of mountain bike crashes, it seems that the steeper the grade is on which one crashes, the force of the impact is less. In this way, falling down the face of a mountain should not be among my greatest fears.

FALL NUMBER TWO: Despite my crash, I decided to continue with my planned ride. I stopped by a creek and attempted to wash away some of the dirt from my person, to no avail. So I proceeded to ride up Rocky Canyon Road, connect with Three Bears and come down. Now, there is a particularly gnarly, steep, and rocky section on the Three Bears trail coming down towards Boise. As I approached it, I felt my tension increasing, my body becoming more rigid and wary. I rode a bit of it and bailed. I stood there for several minutes, trying to get up the courage to try and ride it. I was thinking about how the only way for me to improve is for me to challenge myself and try to do things that are uncomfortable and scary. I took a deep breath and got back on the bike...and bailed. Except this time, my bike started leaning to the right instead of to the left, where my cleat was unclipped and ready to step to the ground. My right pedal is set up particularly tight. And I couldn't get my damn foot disattached from the pedal and I tipped over onto some big rocks. I sustained a small but deep cut on my leg and a deep bruise. When I stood back up, I was fuming with frustration. I walked the rest of the way down feeling like a pathetic lame-o.

FALL NUMBER THREE: I proceeded to ride down the trail. I've been telling myself over and over that it's all about attitude. I was trying desperately to convince myself that I was having a good time, that I wasn't afraid of falling, that even if I did fall that there was a good chance that I wouldn't get too hurt, that I was glad that I bought my new bike. And then I turned a corner to begin my final descent on the off-camber, sandy, washboardy, steep section of trail that marks the end of Three Bears. The next thing I know, I am flying over my handlebars. The sensation occurred for me in slow-motion - - I was thinking about how I better not get hurt three days before I leave for vacation. After I landed, I stood up, saw the blood squirting from my knee, saw my bicycle lying off the trail, its poor handlebars twisted around and the chain having fallen off, the derailleur scratched, looked around and saw that there was no one anywhere near to me, and I started crying. Like a big baby. I felt so frustrated. I had no idea what made me crash this last time...I thought that all was going well and then was flying over my handlebars. I looked around on the trail to try to figure out what had made me fall. As I indicated, it was an off-camber, sandy, washboardy, steep section, but I've ridden it plenty of times with no problems. As I went to wipe away the tears that were streaming down my face, I wiped the sand from my first crash into my eyes. I plopped down and felt myself becoming overwhelmed with discouragement. I decided that I was a crappy bike rider, and what was I thinking, that I was good enough to upgrade to a nice full suspension bicycle. As I started to calm down, I realized that the best explanation for what made me crash was my mal-adjusted disc breaks. I've never ridden on disc breaks before, and these ones...yikes. As I mentioned in my last post, the tension is not adjusted equally on both. It's not REALLY unequal, but the disparity becomes very noticeable on the downhills. Also, there is a great distance that one must pull the break levers before attaining any breaking effect. Once there is breaking effect, however, the breaks are extremely sensitive. All throughout the ride, I was paying close attention to my breaking, but I must have forgotten their sensitivity as I came around that corner and pulled the levers as I would have with my old bike. And over the handlebars I went.

Soon, I'll be off to take the bike to the shop to see if they can adjust it betterly. My wounds are healing. The knee is oozing wound goo, but is not painful or significantly swollen. My deep cut looks black (if it was longer, I'd say that I need stitches, but it's so small that it would only fit one stitch), and my allergic welts from the sage brush are coming down. It's the mental trauma that is bothering me the most. I've decided that I need to take the bike onto some super mild beginner trails to get my confidence back up...but even the thought of bunny trails makes me uneasy. Anyway, I'm sure I'll keep you posted.

Posted by jennifer at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)