You can’t handle the excuse.

Not quite Autumn Yat Ride

I’m hanging onto Matt’s back wheel and making excuses. Not my normal excuses which someday I shall categorise, cross reference and publish in a book entitled ‘Bravery Denied’. If you think you’ve heard then all before, spare a thought for me fast forwarding through the index to find something within bullshit distance of compelling.

Not today. Today I’m in that nebulous zone of competence. Nebulous and fleeting. Wednesday night was lit up by the first artificial lumens of the season.  I was all over the place. Rarely intersecting with the trail but ready with a pithy quip ‘you know when you ride and it feels slow but looks fast? Yeah that trail was just like that only the other way round’.

I searched the faces of my long known riding pals for an alternate view. There were none. ‘Yeah well lights you know, takes a while to get used to them’. Classic excuse. No one else seemed to have a problem.

Shutter through a few days and we’re back in the light on a beautiful autumnal day. Only not quite – while the calendar has flipped to September, the woods have yet to ratchet the season.  It’s not quite the deep green of high summer, but aside from a chilly start we’re riding hard on a composite of dust and endorphins.

My bubble of confidence risks deflation from external pricks* For a start I’m riding ‘Christine the leg snapper’. The persistent death rattle from the pivots has been traced to a very loose axle bolt**, but I’m astride yesterday’s geometry barely supported on non enduro width rims shod with questionable tyres. How the whole thing didn’t explode in an inferno of Internet bollocks is something of a mystery.

What I’m – in reality – riding is a brilliantly sorted trail bike on hero dirt, and I’m absolutely loving it. Punting standard crashing worries out of the bubble while making sufficient progress ensures overthinking fails to hit the priority queue. Now the trail is just my personal ribbon of everything that’s good on a perfect day to chase fast mates on technical trails.

And I’m doing just that. Visual cues suggest the scenery is flashing by at a rate of knots. Internal accelerometers are still in the green tho, this doesn’t feel fast, it feels like a whole lot of fucking fun, but it’s not scary. I’m confidently switching between short tight corners and long sweepers. This bike feels amazing which, if not part of me, is at least not disconnected by higher order prevarication.

So obviously I’m worried. Matt is a better rider than me. He’ll gap me on any trail. The harder the trail, the bigger the gap. Yet I’m comfortably sat two feet behind, hands off the brakes and eyes on the next apex. I’ve even time to wonder when the right time would be to inform him of the rather parlous state of his rear tyre.

Yeah that’s why I can do this. His tyre is fucked. Oh and he’s been away for a month and even good riders need time to dial themselves back in. Maybe everyone is taking it easy today and I missed the memo. Or maybe I’m actually riding pretty well.  I don’t think it’s that, so I’d better find some better excuses.

You know how this goes. When your average joe is convinced they are riding like shit, well they probably are. But it’s 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} off what ‘good riding’ feels like. 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} feels like a shed load as your mates ride away from you, but it’s really not. You can get that back. Maybe not today, but someday and soon.

Compare that to when you’re riding outside of your self enforced parameters. You know it’s transitory.  This is not a ‘new normal’, rather a glimpse of a land with visitation rights. Resident status is repeatedly denied. You’ve no idea how you got here but you know how it ends. Back to being happily or unhappily average. Back to wondering if you could be more skilled, a little braver, a little less analytical.

My arse has been handed to me so many times on these trails, I’ve considered carrying a plate in my backpack for just that purpose. Today tho – and I know it will just be for today – I’m doing more than hanging on. Even when there’s scary shit happening outside of the bubble – dodgy lines, missed apexes, narrowly missed trees.

At one point I’ve managed to hand the whole front end off to barely understood physics with it sliding terrifyingly towards a stump named doom. Even in perfect conditions, on a great bike shod with good tyres, my average ability inevitably punts me towards disaster.

Never got there though. Called a ‘code brown’, laughed it off and got back to being a bit better than average before the pixie dust wears off. We toast a day of brilliant trails with a cold beer and I’m wondering when it gets that good again. Maybe on the next ride, yeah like that shit is going to happen.

Excuses are easy. They give you faux rationale for what. They make a reasoned argument for how. They totally fail to answer the most important question of ‘why’.

Days like this are why.

*not my riding buddies. I prefer ‘Twats’ as a more accurate descriptor 🙂

**’Did you not notice the 3 degrees of lateral flex Al?’ / ‘No. I was distracted by the prospect of death by evil bicycle’,

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