When I first started cycling, I never thought I'd be racing. That was never my intent; never my goal. I never thought I'd be racing for my university or an amateur team. I got a bike to go out, get good exercise, and have fun with some friends. But when I saw some racing, I thought, "Hey! That looks fun!" (No, my competitive self didn't have anything to do with this... okay it did!) I started training to race. Got a bit faster, got better bike-handling skills. I was terrified when I did my first criterium but at the same time, I got addicted. I became a crit slut.
It eventually gets old, though. All this seriousness and hard training; body gets tired, the mind gets exhausted, and it's no longer fun. It becomes a chore. I don't like it when my passions become a chore, so I looked for suggestions on how to get out of "the funk." I got rest, cross train, rest some more, swim, run, so on and so forth. The best suggestion I got was, "Go on a stupid slow ride with some friends. Just go out and goof off." And it worked.
On January 18th, a few friends and I went out to ride some dirt. I finally have a mountain bike and I was able to go out and have some fun, even though I was (still am!) extremely rusty. We went out at an easy pace. I did a lot of sections I used to be terrified to ride without thinking about it too much, which surprised me. It came back! It was the distraction that I needed. Rocks, roots, more rocks, crash, sand; things you don't see on the road. We even went out to the beach and rode our bikes through the sand and some of the little dunes that are on it.
As you can see and hear from this video, we were having way too much fun. Laughing, joking, laughing some more. It's sometimes what we need to get the fun back into a sport we're so passionate about. Sometimes this is what we need to do to kickstart some intense training.
This blog can also be found at http://www.ozarksbiketrails.com/
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