Singletrack Magazine Issue 129 : One Last Run

‘Just one last run’ is when you think you’ve already finished for the day and have had a coffee, a wind-down and a chat. It’s early evening, the sun is still up, and while someone packs the wagon and you’re still in your kit, it seems right to sneak in a quick run down those trails you know so well from a day of riding. It’s getting late, you should be getting on the road, but what harm could a final run of the day do? After all, that last tabletop is bound to go this time.

‘Just One Last Run’ is pressured, and pregnant with expectation. You anticipate that it will give you the ultimate rush of the day, the pinnacle of experience before the week of work ahead. It promises that perfect ride to hold in the mind… nothing done that day will have been as good. Your position into the berms will be super-exact, the jumps just that bit higher and cleaner, the rooty sections will be that much smoother, the rush bigger and better. Perhaps the ‘I’m missing out’ anxiety kicks in,. 

Weirdly, risk theory in finance shows that there is a tendency for people to pay too much for riskier stock. A sense of gambling seems to overtake people’s rational thinking. And that same theory says that if you feel you’re missing out, then you’re likely to take bigger risks. And so you push out the boat to maximise the reward. It’s important to ask the question: ‘In what frame of mind are you going into this last run?’

And all of this suggests that something very different is going on with this final run and why this so often ends in tears, or broken this or damaged that. ‘Just one last run’ is seldom a wind-down run, or taken at less than full-bore. 

For my 14-year-old youngster, I ban ‘Just One Last Run’.

Only I didn’t that afternoon in late September. I should have done, but I didn’t. To excuse my gross failure of judgement it must be said that he is super-precise and ballsy in his riding, yet aware of objective dangers and the perils of injury. He pushes the envelope slowly, so he crashes less often than others of his age and progresses faster. He’s a good lad. 

So, that late-autumn Friday afternoon – as the intensive mountain bike season began to wind down for the year – I promised to pick up the young grom from school, with our hardtail rigs in the car and all the necessary kit to do 90 minutes of pump track and jumping. All the timings worked well; leaving work and switching to the car, preloaded with my Cotic Soul and his Ragley Marley – all checked over and ready to roll. What then unfolded was an hour and a half of excellent training, with the grom clearing the double jumps and tabletops cleanly for the first time, and me still wanging the rear wheel into the exit lip. All by ourselves on the jump and pump track at the bike park, we were really hammering round, including some timed laps. Yep, I was still ten per cent slower than him each time, even though both of us were getting faster and faster. The only other guy was over in the main bike park – a seriously fit and competent Scotsman who sure knew what he was doing. 

End of day. Feeling good. 

A peppermint tea (me) and hot chocolate (him) in the Phoenix Bike Park café wound us down nicely, and as the drizzle started I rode over to the car to pack bikes and kit. “Just one last run,” said Alex, and off he went. But a black cloud washed over me. In the back of my mind I was thinking, yes, he’ll just think I am a boring old git to say ‘no last runs’ so I suppressed the thought and carried on with removing the front wheel of my own bike as the black cloud still lurked in my mind.

“He’s down!” was the shout from the Scotsman – and yep, going into a simple turn that we had ridden literally hundreds of times before, Alex had strayed onto the rubble at the bottom of the berm, and the front wheel had washed out. Classic error. And he was staying down. S h i t. His full face helmet had done its job; no damage to his head despite a slam on the ground. But it was another story with his shoulder. He was grimacing like hell and when sitting up, shaking involuntarily. Big compressive force up through the shoulder: AC tear? Rotator cuff? Socket or humerus fracture? Collarbone? My guess was a fracture, given the shaking. He was taking it well, but I knew that something was awry. He was putting on a hell of a brave face, but the left side of his body was doing that hunched protective thing which hints at something important being broken. Instant Ibuprofen for the swelling, antiseptic wipes for the grazes. And four hours in A&E with us sitting in full ‘I’m an Alien’ gear confirmed a torsional fracture in the clavicle – which actually was a relief – a simple break and so a good prognosis. 

And so we discussed ‘one last run’ and the reasons that we ban them. Why? Are they always bad? Nope. But as our great friend and ski/bike school director Yves Caillet says – after the pause at the end of a session, muscles are rested and stiffening up. Faced with the end of the session, you may suddenly be gripped by an ambition to go big and fast as a glorious last thing, but your senses are depressed from sitting and relaxing at what you thought was the close of the day. What happens at the moment that ‘just one last run’ pops onto the agenda is a rich combination of adverse physical and mental factors. The physical factors mean you are performing below par, while the psychological factors encourage you to overreach. So things are all set for a fall.

Postscript? Alex seems to be mending OK, but has had a few weeks of being more than annoyed at not being able to ride. His reward for risk-taking was eight weeks of frustration. 

Listen to that inner voice and follow the rule of Staying Alive and Fit you Eeejit (SAFE). No ‘one last run’.