Mountain Biking - Why Do I Do It?

So, why mountain biking?

I’ve been getting on bikes, staying on them briefly and falling off them again quickly since I was about five… It’s a matter of debate whether I’ve got any better in those painful thirty-six years, and on reflection, almost certainly not.

What is certain, to paraphrase somebody (probably Churchill - it's usually him or Shakespeare) is that I’ve taken more out of cycling than cycling’s taken out of me – though it has had some pretty big chunks;
my T12 vertebrae is now distinctly wedge shaped
my left collar bone has been restored to something approximating normality with the aid of more titanium than you’d find on most four grand bikes (you’re surely not a real cyclist till you’ve done a collar bone, though I can now understand how that American finished the Tour de France with his broken – I swam a mile of crawl before they screwed and fixed mine and although all the bits grated together a bit, it didn’t actually hurt, which makes you wonder why he didn't win after all. Puff.).

My right humorous took a major wallop on Polaris (not funny) and on the X-ray looked like the top of a fence post somebody had been hitting with a sledge hammer for a day or two; that hurt nearly as much as the T12, but now only makes itself known if I try to lift something heavy over head at the wrong angle. Say, like a bike over a Lyme Park stile for instance.

To be fair, there have been plus points; I did get a free ride in a helicopter one bright and sunny Easter Sunday and the whole town of Bollington kindly turned out to point and watch (they don’t see many bright red helicopters landing on White Nancy). Viewing the photographs of Nobby grinning like a Cheshire Cat outside my ambulance also gives me a warm and pleasant feeling... particularly when I reflect that it was only a matter of weeks before he was similarly afflicted at Glentress.

Once the helicopter landed at Wythenshawe and the pilot stayed in it with the engine running (presumably to stop it being stolen) there followed eight days flat on my back in hospital whilst I coughed painfully and they decided if I’d walk again, and I did. As far as the toilet. Here I discovered that eight days of constipation caused by lying flat on your back, eating hospital food and abusing morphine creates its own uniquely painful set of problems which very nearly meant I couldn't walk back again. On the plus side, I lost an incredible 9 pounds in the eight days I spent in hospital and in case you're wondering, that weight loss didn't include the fruits of my labours (oh how apt that word was) in the hospital toilets. Lovely.

I’ve also done a couple of ribs – very painful – and an early introduction to the pitfalls of mountain biking on your own on tracks you don't know when you're shit on a shit bike, that's too big for you, too heavy and lacking any suspension. In my defense, I cleared the 6 foot drop which appeared in my path out of no-where (it may have been less but from my vantage point in the grass on the down hill side looking back it certainly looked all of six feet) and landed, heavily, both wheels down at the same time. It was a text book landing right up to the point when my right pedal dropped, dug into the slope and stopped the bike dead. This sent me, my ribs, bike and handlbars cartwheeling down the hill in a tangled mess of bike and bruises. The real pain came when I realised I was in the middle of no-where, still had to ride home, the bike was rideable (bloody Saracen) and as this was in 1989/90 I had no mobile.

So, why do I ride mountain bikes?

Because it's safer.

When I was nineteen I broke my right cheek bone and permanently lost the sight in my right eye on a road bike in the days when only people that wore socks under their sandals wore helmets, and they were mainly geography teachers. I've also hit 2 cars on the road, one of which was stationery when I hit it at over 20mph and did £1,500 of damage to it (including a new tail gate, smashed rear window and very badly damaged roof...) and the other decided to pull into a parking space without spotting me doing 30 up the inside down a big hill. Fortunately I only have a small souvenir scar from that one.

Despite a moderately impressive collection of injuries from mountain biking that, if you didn't know me, could easily be the product of years of ambitious freeriding rather than years of abject cowardice, road riding is just too boring, too monotonous and too damn dangerous. On a mountain bike if you don't like the look of it, you can always get off and walk and work on trying to improve your skills or commitment or courage.

No amount of training, courage or commitment is going to save you from the one vehicle that doesn't see you. If you ride regularly on the road, it's not so much a case of "if" you get hit by a car, it's "when".

And what happens then is pure lottery. Feeling lucky?