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Last week I went mountain biking. As I was about to set off, I opened up all of the apps on my phone that record routes, times and performance and hit the green button to start recording.
I was on a mission, I was going to set a new record for every single one of those apps. However, I wasn’t aiming to beat my best times, quite the opposite. I was aiming for a personal worst.
I was trying to rediscover the lost art of going slow… 
Just lately, I’m always in a rush. Rushing through rush hour traffic to get to work, then rushing back home again later the same day. I’m in a hurry to answer emails, in a hurry to tick things off my ‘to-do’ list and under constant pressure to do more and more with less time.
I’m sure most people reading this can relate, sometimes life just moves too fast.
To me, the appeal of spending time outdoors, going hiking or mountain biking, is that it’s an escape from that all too hectic life that we become a part of. It’s a chance to forget about the office politics and the never-ending chain of emails in the inbox. It’s an opportunity to slow down and forget about the list of things that you could or should be doing.
Ultimately, spending time outdoors is a chance to do what you want to do, on your own terms and at your own pace.
When I first bought a mountain bike I’d spend hours just slowly pedalling around huge forests, I’d lose all track of time and would be completely present in those moments, exploring dirt tracks that I’d never seen before, never concerned about how far I’d gone or how I’d find my way back when I decided to head home.
I fell in love with mountain biking back in those days. I didn’t have the first idea what mountain biking was as a sport. I’d never been to a trail centre, I didn’t know the difference between a good bike and a terrible bike, and I definitely didn’t know the difference between a 26er and a 29er.
As I spent more and more time on my bike, I started to understand the sport. I found myself spending Saturday mornings riding around trail centres, sticking to waymarked routes along with dozens of other riders. I started buying magazines that had pages full of expensive bikes and reviews of gear that I didn’t even know I needed.
For a period of 12 months or so, I became obsessed with mountain biking. I read every magazine I could get my hands on and I wrote for every mountain bike magazine that would let me freelance for them. I rode around trail centres at least four or five times a week. I set personal bests for times, and I made steep climbs look easy. I pushed my fitness and skill levels as far as I could, even breaking bones in the pursuit of getting faster and better.
I would sit outside trail centre cafes after my rides, drinking coffee and looking at other riders bikes as they pulled in for their coffees, envious of the expensive, top end bikes that they were locking up. What I wouldn’t give for a carbon fibre frame.
I continued like this for about a year, until one day, I got back from a ride, locked my bike up in the shed and then didn’t touch it again for several months.
Just like that, I’d lost the love. Mountain biking had become a chore, another thing that required me to rush around, I no longer wandered around losing track of time, I now raced around, constantly aware of my Strava time. It was no longer an escape from the rat race, it had just become another kind of rat race.
I all but ended my affiliation with the mountain biking world there and then. These days I might get out and ride about 10 or 15 times a year, not 5 times a week. I still head back to those same forests and trail centres and try and ride like I used to.
Most of the time I just feel frustrated with myself that I can’t tackle hills in the same way that I used to and my Strava times are, quite frankly, embarrassing. I take that frustration all the way home with me, I lock the bike in the shed, and I don’t touch it again until I have forgotten that feeling.
Recently, while strolling through the magazine aisle of the supermarket, I stopped and flicked through a mountain bike magazine. It quickly dawned on me that I didn’t know a thing about mountain biking anymore. I didn’t know what the latest bikes were, and I had no idea what trail centres people were riding these days. My Strava times were irrelevant now as all of the trail centres I had been to had long since been tweaked and extended.
I was back to where I started again, many years before. I took my 10-year-old bike off the bike rack and just started pedalling. I didn’t know where I was going, or how long it would take. I wasn’t too bothered how long it would take me to reach the top of that hill in the distance and I wasn’t even slightly upset when a young kid overtook me on a carbon fibre bike.
I just had my head up, looking at the changing leaves of the autumn forest, making one pedal stroke after another, rediscovering the lost art of going slow.
You know what? I think I might love mountain biking again.
