bennybenny

In 3rd year of biking, finally truly discovered the type of biking I love and why. I tried:

-road biking; never felt comfortable, didn't like the small tires, fast pace on concrete, and especially riding w cars

-tried mountain biking and loved it...to an extent; wider, less technical tracks I love, but honestly don't like narrow single track and a bunch of rocks/roots

Kept reading and experimenting, really discovered the joy in both gravel grinding on mt bike and lond distance my biking on less technical tracks, like pushing endurance threshold off road wo the tight turns. Also like rails to trails rides in the country, love the nature of these types of rides.

I write this for myself, but also for new or newer riders not to quit biking if you haven't found your niche yet. Keep experimenting until you find your right type of ride or rides.

Anyone have similar experience of knowing that you wanted to bike but not quite feeling right w the type of riding you have chosen?

Ps: trying cyclocross this fall..,

Bennybenny

flargle

This is an inspirational post because it expresses the core stoke of riding bikes.

If you keep riding singletrack, you will enjoy it more and more as you get more skilled. The secret is, don't try to go fast. Just focus on flowing through a trail, experimenting with different lines, ride over rocks (not just around them), take little jumps here and there, etc.

But there is something special about riding your cross bike out the front door, hitting some trails, some gravel roads, some gnarly powerline roads, some pavement, just exploring. It is very personal and very satisfying.

dgodave

When I started MTBing a loooong time ago, I was pretty awkward on downhills and technical stuff. But the opportunity to explore kept me going. Gravel & all-road riding opens up those opportunities too.

knobster

I love it but started off doing it on a motorcycle. Exploring forests and finding places that I wouldn't be able to in a car is always something that I wanted to do but until recently, hadn't tried it on a bicycle. I've been having a blast doing it and the only drawback I've found is dealing with the dust of passing vehicles and the occasional 15-20% grade...

Andy_K 

I'm with you on the mountain biking thing. I love mountain biking, but I don't like trails where I have a significant chance of hurting myself. Of course, the "keep-doing-it" advice makes sense there. The more you do it, the more trails you can ride without having a significant chance of hurting yourself. My main gripe is that, around here at least, there seem not to be a lot of trails between the "pleasant ride through the woods" level and the "carrying my bike down hills I can barely walk down safely" level and everyone I know who is into mountain biking always wants to ride the latter. We do have a couple of amazing trail systems with beginner-to-intermediate friendly trails, but just a couple.

Cyclocross racing is great in this regard. Apart from the competition aspect, it tends to provide fun-to-ride courses that offer some technical challenge to a guy like me and usually without a lot of stuff that makes me want to pee myself.

If you're anywhere near the C&O Canal (and by "near" I mean anywhere on the east coast), take some time off and ride the towpath. I did it earlier this month, and it is amazing. The trail surface isn't great, but it is exactly the kind of out in the country nature immersion that you mentioned. I don't know that I've ever felt more distant from industrial civilization than I did for most of that ride. It even gets within about 12 miles of D.C. before you start to hear auto traffic. The adjoining Great Allegheny Passage isn't bad either.

bennybenny

Cool, insightful replies, thank you.

for mt biking, I like it, but if I hit say a 5 mile trail, at the end I'm back where I started usually the parking lot. I am learning to like the longer rides be it gravel, easier mt biking tracks, or concrete/limestone trails or a combination of several. I like going 20-100 miles (long way from ever going near 100 however), but have to improve my bike repair skills.

also, starting to see more such rides as races; just saw one that is roughly 7% single track, 15% concrete, 40% fire road/gravel, rest wide mt biking tracks.

But this is me; to newer riders-keep reading and experimenting to see what biking style you love; maybe it's fat tire riding in winter to help get thru cold and snow, or road, short cyclocross races on grass, super long distance rides over several days or even weeks, or tandem w your partner or up and down hills on a mt bike, and more.

im still learning big time.

benny

corwin1968

I can't really define the type of riding I prefer, beyond calling it recreational. I don't like that term because to me, it brings up images of someone sedately riding a completely upright cruiser at a few mph and that's definately not me.

I tend to think of how I ride as mountain biking on pavement. I don't like riding over obstacles or riding in dirt but I love a ride with tons of twists and turns and obstacles I have to ride around. Any stretch of straight road bores me to tears. I can ride a straight sidewalk because there is an element of balance in staying on the sidewalk and there are often obstacles to ride around. Even better is the sidewalks that stretch throughout the greenbelt in our subdivision. These are normal width sidewalks (maybe 4ft?) with no straight sections. Some sections are gentle curves and some sections are quite wavy. There are also several parks interspersed on the system. I love riding here and can often get out when there are few or even no pedestrians and I can just blast down the sidewalks at 15mph or faster. If pedestrians are out, the streets of our subdivision are just as curvy as the sidewalks so they are my backup plan. 99% of my riding never leaves our subdivision.