Originally Posted by
tony_merlino
This part is so hard for many of us, especially us older folks who are coming to cycling later in life. Even if we were never athletes, a lot of us have been pretty successful academically, in our careers, etc. We didn't get that way by aspiring to mediocrity. But this is a whole new ballgame. For many of us, for the first time in our lives we're attempting something that we were never particularly good at and have almost no hope of excelling at.
I think the reason I am finding trail riding so much more fun than riding the road is that I have no expectations. No one talks about how fast they ride a trail. And it isn't technical single track riding, so I don't have to compare myself with those riders. It is just fun. I feel like I am flying through the woods, around the ponds and across the cornfields. Identifying birds by their calls. Watching the baby bunnies skitter across the trail. Stopping and pulling out the binoculars to check out the wood duck babies and the indigo buntings that just returned for spring.