Once upon a time, I was a mountain biker. It was mostly back in the mountain biking boom of the 90s, but like most things I do, I got out of it later than most. Late to the party, late to leave – that\u2019s me, over and over again all my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My wife started running before I did, and she kinda dragged me into it. That\u2019s surprising to a lot of people nowadays, because she doesn\u2019t run anymore, and she never got into marathons or ultramarathons like I did. But it\u2019s true. And when I say she \u201cdragged\u201d me into it, I mean it\u2019s because I was resistant to the idea for a long time because I still thought of myself as a mountain biker. This in spite of the fact that I was barely riding at the time, and had done little to no riding for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She found a race that appealed to me, I ran it, and I got into running – far more than I ever had done mountain biking. And for the best part of the decade that followed, I was all in on running and loved it. But the Covid lockdowns and outbreaks of 2020 kind of broke it for me (along with many other things for me). I did good keeping up my running for quite a few months, but as summer turned into fall that year, I started losing focus and began trailing off, and as fall turned into winter (and due to the sociopolitical craziness of the time), I not only stopped running, I also stopped nearly everything and became very withdrawn and depressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew there had been a big biking boom in 2020, and given that I had some history with mountain biking, I decided I should give it a shot. I desperately needed a change of pace, and I thought getting back on a bike might be the ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I won\u2019t detail the process of shopping for a bike in early 2021, but it was challenging. If you know, you know. The price range I was looking at was the same price everybody else was looking at, too, and there was very little in stock anywhere, whether local or online. But eventually I ended up with a bike and went out to my old stomping grounds at McDowell Mountain Park to ride the Pemberton trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been on Pemberton on foot quite a few times over the course of the last six-ish years, so I\u2019m very familiar with it, and I discovered long ago that it had undergone some reroutes from the Pemberton I used to ride back in the 90s. Hitting it on a bike, however, brought back a lot of memories of the way I used to ride it and I was reminded all over again of the differences between my biking memories and my current experience. (And if you are wondering which version I prefer, it\u2019s the current one – it\u2019s less technical than what I remember the old trail being, and for a rider of my meager skill level, it\u2019s more fun.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So my adventure buddy Jim and I went out and rode it! He was on a new bike as well and we both had fun doing the ride and figuring out the bikes in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So here\u2019s the reason I am telling the story. Having fun was something I had not done in months by that point. Cruising down that descent in the last third of the loop was like a kickstart to a brain that was stalled out in a deep funk, and until it happened out there, I had no idea how much I had needed something like that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this is kind of a note to self, and kind of a note to anyone else who might be in a funk and wanting out of it – think of something that seems like it would be fun – or even something you\u2019ve had a lot of fun doing in the past that you might have left behind – and go do it. I can\u2019t guarantee it\u2019ll work for sure, but it did for me and it might work for you too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once upon a time, I was a mountain biker. It was mostly back in the mountain biking boom of the 90s, but like most things I do, I got out of it later than most. Late to the party, late to leave – that\u2019s me, over and over again all my life. My wife started… Continue reading Trail Runner Buys a Bike<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biking","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1075,"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions\/1075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/azventurer.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}