The End of the Endo, Part Two

May 2010. I still felt tired, weary, depressed following my surgery. I didn’t really expect a miracle cure, but I was desperate to get back to the life I knew: bikes, beers and booyah. At my two-week post-op appointment with my surgeon, she assured me my after-effects were all quite normal and would subside in time, and that I was indeed on the path to a good and awesome recovery.

“Can I ride my bike?” I sheepishly asked.

“Absolutely!” she replied, grinning.

I went home, packed up the NinjaCougar and proceeded to drive to Bend with a few friends to ride about 10 hours over the next three days. My friends beseeched me to ride my geared squishy bike. Why on earth would anyone choose a rigid singlespeed to ride when they were still recovering from a major abdominal surgery?

It didn’t make sense even to myself. See… I actually don’t like to work that hard. I think of myself as a hedonist, a pleasure junkie. What’s pleasant about never having the right gear? Or not having a little suspension to take the edge off? Or being completely spun out with a cadence of about 2 million on the downhill?

It doesn’t make sense. I’ve stopped trying to make sense of it and just enjoy the ride. Clearly I need to update my definition of pleasure. And I’m pretty sure my surgeon had something else in mind when she gave the green light to bike riding. She probably imagined  me pedaling my step-through mixte with flowery basket (a bike I do not own, FWIW) to the grocery store to get some ice cream and bonbons.

That little weekend of “recovery riding” definitely threw a wrench into my recovery plan. My doc warned me that if I “pushed myself” I’d probably be exhausted for a few days. She was right, and even now, four months later I still don’t have the strength or fitness I had even a year ago. What I do have is way more skill.

Riding my rigid singlespeed has improved my handling tremendously. Admittedly, I’m no rock star freeride bike monkey. But I’m no chopped liver either. I’d say I’m a solid intermediate rider with room for improvement. I tend to ride a little conservatively because I don’t session technical stuff without protection. But guess who just upgraded her protection?

OCT 2010: 24 Hours of Moab. After having work conflicts over the past couple years, I finally had that weekend free. I had a few ladies interested in racing as a team. I wanted it. But once I became ill and faced surgery that dream faded. There was too much fitness lost, too much weight gained, and frankly I was a little concerned that I no longer had the head for racing.

But then the good people of Bend decided to host their first Super D race. It fell way outside the Oregon Super D cup series, but by now I’d managed to log several burly rides, and the trail the race was held on is one of the newest and most fun in the area. It was a varied course—fast, flat, twisty sections followed by even faster, rocky, technical sections, perfect s-curves and deep berms.

Despite the cold, wet, menacing Portland-like weather I pre-rode on Saturday with a few lady friends. There was one technical section that had previously stumped me. I’d been approaching it all wrong. Super awesome pro rider Erika coached me along with a little lesson in how to tame the rock.

“I can’t.” I protested. “It’s too steep. I can’t launch it, the landing’s all wrong. I need pads. And a full face helmet.”

Erika persisted. “Yes you can. You don’t have to wheelie drop it, just roll it, through here, then push hard, there… like this…”

Effortlessly, she carves once again through the tunnel of rocks. When I imagine attempting the same myself all I can see is bloody carnage, bruises and painful humiliation.

“I can’t. My head tube angle is too steep. I need a more relaxed geometry and more suspension.”

Erika did her best to not roll her eyeballs and gave another demonstration. “Peek and push” she intoned.

“Peek and push and peek and push and…” I silently chanted, approaching the rock drop which featured two giant boulders on either side, creating this illusion of weird scariness. “…and peek and push…” And… I stalled. Once more Erika patiently coached me through another demo. “You can do this. I KNOW you can,” she insisted.

After two botched attempts where I bailed out, I finally rolled up, hesitated right over the lip, and then reluctantly committed. I pushed down hard, and rolled through the Rock Tunnel of Doom, silly head tube angle and all. Turning to look back suddenly it seemed absurd that such a minor feature could weird me out so utterly. Immediately I insisted on riding it again, as if to convince myself it hadn’t been a  fluke or that it hadn’t been luck, but rather, skill. Though my heart was still pounding loudly from the first attempt, I went again, hesitating a little less, but still hesitating. Third time’s a charm, so I hit it one more time. No brakes. Give the girl a gold star.

Whatever happened the next day, this weekend was already triumphant. I won. Uma 1; Fear 0. And not 5 minutes later as we were wrapping up the technical section I caught Erika and excitedly said “I can’t wait to hit that again on my rigid SS!” I had gone from utter paralysis by fear to ramping up the difficulty by a factor of 11 in a matter of moments. Make that Uma 2; Fear -1.

NEXT UP: The Greatest Obstacle—A Race(-ish) Report

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