Embracing Change

Sandwiched between our trip to Dallas for grandma Fern’s birthday and our visit to Disney Land with Cynthia last April Rebecca and I visited Adam for three days in the San Francisco Bay area, going mountain biking every day. 

Day 1 was at Water Dog, which is Adam’s back yard. He showed us where he crashed into the poison oak. Day 2 Adam and I went to Tamarancho in Marin County while mom stayed home doing schoolwork (but we went out on a ‘gravel’ ride in the evening with her). Day 3 we made the trek to the Soquel Demonstration Forest near Santa Cruz to ride the six sections of the Flow trail. Bay area riding can seem like a combination of North Carolina’s deep woods and Colorado’s Front Range, with its exposed rock and mountains.

We were fortunate that Adam keeps an ample supply of bicycles on hand, and provided mom a Trek hardtail, while he offered me his Transition Smuggler. I did my best to set it up the way I am used to, raising the seat, putting on a longer stem, and using my own pedals and shoes.

Adam wasn’t impressed. In particular, he wondered why I keep my seat so high and after I crashed a couple of times on slow technical terrain, he wanted me to try flat pedals instead of clipping into my SPDs. I think I remember him saying “Now I’m the master” or something. I thought a lot about Adam’s suggestions (and taunts). But as hard as it is to admit that there might be value in another way of doing things, its another thing entirely to undo 40 years of habit. And it may not always go well at first.

In any case, here’s a formula that might be helpful in approaching change:

1. Open the door – open the door for a change that will help you do something better, do something new; introduce something that will make you happier; consider an idea you have been resisting; accept some advice someone offers you; consider what might be holding you back. The essence of this step is humility. Ask others what they see. 
2. Ask – ask someone you trust for input and advice; study the topic to see what has worked for others; listen to what people might be telling you; look for clues that might constitute unsolicited feedback. 
3. Test – begin to put something into action based on what you have learned. Know what the expected outcome is supposed to be, what the criteria are for a valid test, and make sure to give it a good faith effort. Pay attention to how it plays out. Be honest in your assessment and continue in humility. 
4. Consolidate – adopt what works; make a new habit of it; integrate what you have learned into your broader framework for thinking and living.

So how did this work out for me on the Mountain biking front? Something like this:

Trying my seat a little lower – this was easy. Even though I still believe I get maximum efficiency with the seat a little higher, mountain biking is different than the smooth, continuous high cadence of road biking. The ground is moving around underneath you and it’s easy to get bucked around the more your legs are extended – especially on rough terrain with rocks or roots. I’m now riding with my seat a centimeter or so lower than before on my mountain bike.

Flat pedals – this was more complicated. At the end of our gravel ride I rode Adam’s hardtail with flats. I tried a slight lift over a little mound and my feet left the pedals. When I landed one foot made contact but the other didn’t, and the free pedal slammed around and hit me in the shin (seems like I repeated that painful experience a half a dozen times over the next couple of months). I tried flat pedals a couple more times when I got home with pretty unsatisfying results. I switched back to SPDs and went out to the trails by the airport and came across a guy who said he had switched – he told me to get some new shoes and claimed it would take me three rides to get used to it (but I noticed that he never got his bike off the ground much).

After more reading, I finally decided to buy some real flat pedal shoes – I ordered some Five Ten Freerider Pros. That’s pretty much when I started to see improvement, partly because of the shoes, and partly because of the accumulated practice. But it was a little disappointing riding my trails and skipping all the jumps (they never ended well). After a few weeks I did a technical trail and found that I had more confidence on steep up-hills over roots (knowing if the bike came to a stop I could easily put my foot down). By the time we made the trip to Utah and I rode Vertigo on flats I was starting to get the hang of catching air on small rollers without coming off the pedals. I’m still not confident doing drops and ramps except on my SPDs, but I feel a sense of freedom riding flats – not freedom from being attached to the pedals, but freedom from feeling like I can only enjoy riding if I’m attached. And I think it’s making a me a better mountain biker. I’m cooler too.

Update: after a couple of focused practice sessions, I'm doing the first level of ramp-jumps at the Cisco trails.