Fear on the Bike, or, Embracing Gravel

I am not a prolific blogger, by any stretch of the imagination. But this is something I wanted to write about (albeit shortly) that definitely does not fall into the “hey, today we did X” category.

I lined up for the Fayetteville Stage Race back in March. I was really excited as this was the first USAC stage race that I had done in a long time. It even had a time-trial, so I was thinking, hey, maybe, just maybe, I can pull in some sort of result. Now, that didn’t happen. In fact, I got dropped in the first road race. I was going to finish. Though 3 miles from the finish line I ended up in some gravel and then all of a sudden I was slammed down on the road. 

Two things: 1) the gravel looked like asphalt, so when I pulled over to let the other race pack go by I didn’t know I was getting in to gravel and 2) I think there was a crack or something in the gravel for my front wheel to just stop like it did. All in all, what matters here is that I had a healthy dose of road rash in several places on the left side of my body. Oh, and my left hand. The one day I forget my gloves… sheesh.

Now the brush burns have all healed. I’ve been back on the bike plenty. But a few weeks ago I was out for a ride and we went through a section that was unpaved, bumpy, and full of gravel here and there. And I froze.

I felt it, my body tensed up, I stopped pedaling. I was holding on to my handlebars with a death grip. I was just trying to roll through the gravel without falling. I felt completely unstable, and it got worse the more I tensed up.

Fear. Something on the inside was remembering getting slammed to the pavement and did not want to be on the bike on the gravel. But here is the thing, fear is the worst thing you can have while riding. It makes you tense. When you are tense, you don’t absorb bumps, you exaggerate them. Luckily I was just on a ride with a few people, and was able to keep my distance. But if I had been in a race… that could have been bad being that locked up.

After I got off the unpaved patch I realized that I was going to have to do something about this. I can’t tense up every time I hit some gravel or a particularly bumpy piece of road. I have to stay loose, let my upper body absorb all the bike movement, stay calm, and keep pushing on the pedals (the more the wheels are spinning the more they want to stay upright). So as I have been doing my laps of Shoal Creek during the week I have been purposefully hitting the unpaved gravelly patches. I have to beat the fear out of my brain. I am hoping to head out back east soon and ride through the unpaved area that caused me so much panic. I may even do it a couple of times. 

I just know that fear on the bike is bad, panic causes wrecks, and that’s the last thing I want. I am sure everybody I will be racing against will thank me.