Taking the Plunge: In search of my single-track self

AMC Outdoors, June 2001

By Madeleine Eno

When my friends and I were small, playing what we called "Bikes!," little did we know our game would be a precursor to a sport so gnarly, so hip, so controversial. We just loved how it felt to fly off the crest of Benfield's Hill and splash between the rocks in the brook on our mighty one-speeders.

Soon, though, I moved from the woods to the road, and mentally drew a line between road- and mountain biking. I stayed firmly on one side of that line, finding my pleasure in bent-over handlebars and long rides on black tar. The line was kept firmly in place when I started working for a hiking organization and witnessing the tension mount around the mountain-bike issue. But when, a few years ago, some friends invited me to ride in Rockport, Mass.'s Dogtown — one of the area's more challenging courses — I gladly signed on, eager to see what all the ruckus was about.

Once there, I quickly forgot about sides, and started focusing on survival. In the first five minutes, I catapulted over the handlebars after slamming on my front brakes on a steep descent. And that was just the beginning. Despite the bumps and bruises, and a friend's dislocated shoulder, the day was thrilling — exhilarating even. A lot like "Bikes!" But life intervened, and I didn't go again.

Then last summer, Amy Regan-Axelson sent a brochure for her women's mountain-biking clinic. Hmmm. Maybe learning some basics would allow me to spend a little less time on the ground and more time having fun. Maybe it would allow me to better understand the mountain-biker psyche. Maybe it could even help me with my job.

Ready to Ride
So, on a clear August morning, four of us meet at Amy's Brookline, N.H., house. The class: Ellen, a colleague of mine with many rides under her belt; Chris, who's visiting from London and hasn't been on a bike in years; Ann, a N.H. local just getting her feet wet; and me. We gather on the porch as Amy, a warm, 42-year-old mountain-bike world-record holder, hands us a flyer listing the rules of responsible riding and has us fill out disclaimers. The mantra of this powerhouse mother of three? "Just relax. Look ahead."

First we tackle bike maintenance. For a half-hour, we pull tires off and on, and attach and re-attach brake cables while Amy discusses how to avoid broken chains (don't pedal if a stick is caught in your chain), flats (avoid hitting objects straight on), and torn-off derailleurs (God forbid).

Bikes shipshape, faces inadvertently smeared with grease, and minds full of the image of these now delicate-seeming instruments exploding into pieces miles from home, we're ready to ride. Amy has laid out an obstacle course of sorts in her backyard. One of the reasons she chose the house was because of the teaching possibilities inherent in this lawn. After a few laps, Amy asks us to attempt jumping the logs she's strewn around. For me, this feels as possible as sitting in the driver's seat of my car and yanking up hard on the steering wheel to make it leap over speed bumps.

Taking on Logs
Amy breaks it down into doable-sounding steps: Decelerate, sliding your weight back and off the front wheel. Push down on the handlebars and pull back up hard to ease your front wheel up over the log. Then bring your weight forward again and when you feel the back wheel touch the log, start pedaling fast to get the rest of the bike over.

When it's my turn, I do all this, but in slow motion. I use my entire body weight to heave up the front tire, and my bike stops cold, lodged on top of the log. Amy says that one of the big fears people have about mountain biking is looking silly. Stuck on the log, I'm suddenly over that. The other one is not being aggressive enough. OK. By the next lap, I start to get the rhythm, and clunk up and over. Soon, we're all bounding over one log per lap, then two, and part of me would feel very content to spend the day circling the lawn and working on this new skill.

But Amy has grander plans. Off we pedal to a system of class-six and logging roads that winds through the woods around Brookline. Amy's neighbors wave as we pass. I leave the paved road with a sense of guilty pleasure. My teeth rattle as we navigate dry creekbeds littered with large and small rocks, criss-crossed with roots. Amy says, "I'd rather take you to places that are over your head, then you can choose what you want to do."

Your Body the Shock Absorber
As we stand at the top of one hill, looking down, Amy offers more of her biking-is-like-life wisdom: "Hover. Crouch. Be like a cat before it springs. That way every little bump won't send you off in a different direction."

I push off — crouching, hovering — with every little bump sending me off in a different direction. The bike bucks like a bronco under me. But unlike at Dogtown, I manage to stay on.

I find myself relaxing. My problem before was probably my gritted teeth and death grip on the handlebars. "When you're relaxed," Amy says, "your body is the shock absorber."

On the smooth sections, we ride along, chatting. I flash on all the debate around the damage left by mountain-bike tires and the attitudes of riders. I try to remember the rules of riding in our handout: Stay on the trail, always yield trail, never spook animals...

Commit to the Puddle
So far so good. The only wildlife we've encountered is two 10-year-old boys on big three-wheeler ATVs. Our final challenge is a daunting mud puddle, six feet wide and about five times as long. Here's where you really need to commit to what you're doing, says Amy. Her world-record is for the 24-hour mountain-bike ride, where she might face such a puddle in the dark, utterly exhausted. "If you let up at all, you're going to go over. If you don't push yourself, you're not going to get better."

I feel very committed to the puddle. I grind as hard as I can on my pedals, but my wheels are firmly planted in the muck, and over I go. Even still, it's fun. Ellen gets a running start and splashes in. She grimaces, we cheer ("speed up!" "move back on the seat!"). It's like she's pedaling through 30 feet of knee-deep chocolate pudding, but Ellen comes out standing.

A half-hour later, the afternoon has cooled and we're back at Amy's, hosing down our bikes and our shock-absorber bodies like the pros. I'm a little surprised at my reluctance to wash all that mud off my legs.

—Madeleine Eno is Publisher and Co-editor of AMC Outdoors.