Ten Things We Know We Should Do…But Don’t

From the moment we are born, we are learning. Our brains take in information about the world around us, and these experiences help our brains to form connections, synaptic links, and pathways that allow us to understand the world around us. To know right from wrong. To learn from our mistakes, and even to take on board lessons taught by others.

Through kindergarten, school, maybe even on to higher education, we learn. Then we buy many magazines and do hours of internet research, and learn more. We learn everything we can about mountain bike technology and armed with this information we go out and buy a mountain bike. At this point, we stop learning, and are doomed to repeat mistakes again, and again, and again. We’ll laugh at our mates who makes the same mistakes, or shake our heads sagely, but still we don’t learn. We all know we should do these things, but somehow our brains repeatedly fail to make the necessary leap from ‘knowing’ to ‘doing’.

Here we go with our list of things we know we should do, but don’t…

1. Train for events we’ve entered

Can’t see the video? Click here.

It’s 6 months away, in June. You enter thinking it’ll give you a goal, something to focus on. January is cold and wet, you buy rollers, you fall off. February is icy, you buy a turbo trainer, it is boring and your soul withers when you get on it. March is interrupted by a streaming cold. April’s Easter holiday childcare commitments half the available training time. Maybe you manage a longish ride the first weekend, a long one the next, then your bike is in for a pre race service, and then you’re tapering. You get round the event, but next year, you’re going to train properly. January comes, you’ve entered the event, but it’s cold and wet…

2. Clean our bikes

It’s the end of the ride. You are cold and wet. Your bike is wet and muddy. You are getting colder, especially after that post ride pint. You tip a bucket of water over your bike, rub the chain with a rag, splash on some lube, and head for the shower. You’ll wash the bike tomorrow. Five days later, maybe even seven of it’s been a busy week, you head to the shed. Your cassette is rusted, as is your chain. Damn. You lube thoroughly, vowing to give it a thorough clean after the ride. The ride is long, you are tired, and it is dark when you get home…

3. Get our suspension serviced

We spend much time setting our new fork and shock up just so. We clean the stanchions religiously after every ride for the first couple of months. Then the weather turns – See above cleaning regime – and you give them a quick squirt with gt85 before a ride. Things start to get a bit sticky, so you look into servicing.

There’s a waiting list for the next fortnight so instead you buy some special lube which promises to free things up a bit. This seems to work so you figure the service can wait till things get a bit worse. Then things get clunky. You take the bike into the local bike shop and they promise to fit it in as soon as they can. They call you a week later. Do you really want them to fix them? It’s only going to be £50 more to buy a new set of forks.

4. Carry kit

It’s a glorious morning, you’ve sprung out of bed early, there’s just time for a quick spin before work/school run/adult life. You’re ready, but you’ve got your shoes on and the bike out when you realise your pump is in your commuter pack, which is upstairs, under the bed where your partner is asleep. And you’ve got a new stair carpet, you’d have to take your shoes off. It’s only an hour’s ride, you’re not going far, you only have an hour, you need to be on your way. You press on.

30 minutes later, at the furthest point from home, you hear a hiss. There is no mobile signal. Pushing commences. Finally you reach somewhere with one bar. You call and text, but it seems your sleeping partner has their phone on silent. You push on, listening out for the ring of your phone. You start to jog, while ringing again. This results in your pedal pins colliding with your leg. Blood starts to flow. There is no time to stop, and anyway the first aid kit is in another bag (it was beside the one you grabbed). The hour you had is gone. You are late.

5 minutes later your phone rings. Where the hell are you? Your partner is now going to be late because you’re not there to do the school run/run them to the station/do adult things. No they can’t come and get you because you haven’t got a pump but you have got both sets of car keys. What do you mean you don’t have a pump, what are you, stupid? Don’t you remember what happened last time you left your pump at home? Your phone beeps, then cuts out.

5. Charge our phones

It’s a big day out, you’re meeting a friend. By the time you get there you’re at half charge – you needed the sat nav to get there. You take a call and direct the friend to the start point. You set off, having taken a selfie. You Instagram the summit, and the pub lunch. Then the battery gives up. Two hours later you’re stuck in traffic on the way home.

The last trace of you is your picture of a pint in a pub. Not entirely unreasonably your partner thinks that either a) you are still in the pub , or b) you were in the pub and are now broken by the trail side somewhere remote. You arrive home innocent and ignorant of the worry you have caused. ‘Hi, what a great ride, I’m starving, what’s for tea?’ is not a good opener.

6. Edit GoPro footage

You buy yourself a GoPro so you can film your own sick edits. Or maybe catch a good crash that will pay for the GoPro and a few beers if you send it in to You’ve Been Framed. You strap it to your helmet, your chest, your bike. You film a whole memory card’s worth of rides, without a single person falling off. There’s some great scenery in there though, you’re sure, so you dump it all onto your computer to clear the memory (because you’re not a dick, you’ll edit it down to the good bits rather than uploading the whole thing to YouTube), and ride some more. And repeat.

Eventually you have 200 hours of ride footage but since you’ve never actually done anything with it you stop taking the camera out – your GoPro is the foot spa of the bicycle world. On the second ride out without your camera, the rider in front crashes in what would have been awesome style if only you could show it to anyone.

7. Volunteer for a local MTB race

You’ve seen the appeals on Facebook for marshals, but somehow you’re always a bit busy the weekends that they need help. You have work to catch up on, you need to spend time with your family, you need to spend time with your shed. Funny how these things are never such a problem the weekends you want to race though.

8. Sign up for a skills course

You were going to sign up for the course you saw running locally, but then £80 seems like a lot to spend on a day’s riding. So you put it off – you can probably improve a bit by yourself, right? You watch some YouTube tutorials, read a ‘how to’ article in a magazine, and head out to the trails. A rear manual is harder than it looked on YouTube, and you feel like a dick trying to hop over that stick. You can get the wheel off the ground if you yank hard enough, so you head to the drop offs on the trail.

After rolling a couple, you attack the next one. You yank the bars, yank your SPDs, you take off. You land, on your ass with your forks between your knees and your rear wheel on your head. Your brake lever is broken (£60), you’ve broken a spoke (£40), and you’ve cracked your helmet (£150). Good value.

9. Turn off Strava

Riding, it’s all about the personal challenge, and the scenery, and the adventure. Not the segments. The segments used by local horse riding groups to show how irresponsible mountain bikers are hurtling down bridleways in pursuit of golden crown; and by walkers’ groups to show how mountain bikers are riding on footpaths; and by conservationists to show how mountain bikers have been creating illegal downhill trails in the nature reserve. You are King of the Mountain, Queen of the Descent, and Lord of the Dicks.

10. Empty your bladder

Whether it’s water, juice, or sterilising fluid…empty your bladder, wash it out, and hang it up to dry. You all know what we’re talking about.

Are these familiar? How many of these have you failed to do – and at what cost? What have we missed?