My son Grady and I checking out the downhill mountain biking in Sun Valley, ID
I could go into a long diatribe about my history with mountain biking but to keep this blog post on point I’m just going summarize that I was lucky enough to do a lot of mountain biking when I was young, took a hiatus while my kids were young (lots of trail running and racing.) My son, now 10, loves mountain biking so I knew this summer was the summer I needed to get back into the sport.
I never totally left but training and running races the last 8 or 9 years didn’t leave much room for biking. I would get out 2 or 3 times a year on my old 2005 Giant Trance but running was my focus.
My goal for this summer was to have a new or at least a “new to me” mountain bike before Labor Day, as we had a family vacation to Sun Valley planned, my favorite place to mountain bike. I was also training for a 50 mile trail race on July 28th and knew after that race it would be time to make the switch. Mentally I knew I’d be ready, I’d already trained 500 miles for this race and I was ready for something different. Even before my race I was shopping for bikes.
I got really lucky when a friend of mine decided to sell his 2016 Giant Trance Advanced. He gave me a screaming deal and moving 11 years into the future of mountain bikes has been extraordinary! What was I waiting for? If you haven’t bought a new mountain bike in the last 5 years you owe it to yourself…trust me.
This same friend then invited my son and I to join he and his son for an evening of chair lift assisted downhill mountain biking at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The first image that came into my mind when he invited us was me flying through the air only to crash and burn. I was scared. I’m forty one years old, the last thing I needed was a broken collar bone.
I texted another friend of mine who works at Jackson Hole, he said, “Don’t worry, it’s just like skiing you can go as big or as small as you want.” That helped, so did borrowing a full face helmet, and protective pads.
So how did it go? It was awesome! I’m now the world’s biggest proponent of downhill mountain biking, especially for older guys like me who want to get more comfortable on their bike. The chairlifts make it easy to get quality mileage and just like skiing you can start on the easy runs and work your way up. After our day at Jackson Hole, one day in Sun Valley and another day at Grand Targhee I’m now comfortably riding and jumping on the “more difficult” trails and looking forward to tackling harder trails next summer.
A word of warning though…it’s addicting! When you nail your first trail from top to bottom, barely having to touch your brakes, banking corners and “catching backside” on the jumps there is hardly a better feeling in the world.