Experience over youth

[2manyoranges]

Taking the Retrobike date cutoffs, my pre-1997 body is not in quite the same shape as my son’s post-1998 (his was founded in 2005) body. He’s been scouted by sports organisations so he is no Slouch. He can roast me in singletrack and barbecues me in the pump track and jump park. But there are two things I notice, both consistent with sports psychology research on skills decay….

The first is the role of stamina. Boy can I keep going, when youngsters blast off and then fade - round about out at the 15 mile mark, I see them slacken off and I start to hear ‘hang on, slow down a bit’ rather than ‘keep up….’. It’s probable that this is a combination of physiological and psychological factors - heart and lung physiology does change if you have exercised and trained hard for forty years. And then you just know better to pace yourself through a longer challenge, such as a six hour ride in the hills.

The second is skill, and ‘remembered tactics’. My son acquires a new skill incredibly quickly. But I notice that I sometimes can gain on him in singletrack through much better line choice and micro routing. Only one things worries me about this. He’s beginning to accumulate that store of technique regarding wise choice in gear ratio, braking technique, and other implicit skills which I have deep in my pocket.

What I do know is this - at the current 63 years versus 16 years I can still pull ground on various points on a ride;.…a fantasy thought….if my current 63 year performance was up against him at 63 he would probably be utterly impossible to catch.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

if my current 63 year performance was up against him at 63 he would probably be utterly impossible to catch.

This seems natural; he's receiving skills training and knowledge from you that absolutely didn't exist when you were coming up. It is unfair to compare an athlete today to the ones of old, the technology that goes into training has advanced lightyears.

 

[2manyoranges]

Agreed…..and it‘s Just Not Fair!!!!!

Oh for time travel. Then I would go back and help the 16 year old me to learn faster and smarter. All it needs is a flux capacitor on my Cotic and a speed of 88 mph……

 

[Once A Hero]

There's a strong chance you have a better skillset when it comes to picking a line, because the bikes of old necessitated that we did that in order to actually maintain momentum or stay on!
Now with new tech, there is much less time and energy spent thinking and choosing what line to take as you can simply blast over it and let the bike/tyres do the work.
Assuming you are on a new machine - you may still be 'over thinking' the single track line choice, in which case ditch the thinking, and let the bike build you a bigger lead!

 

[2manyoranges]

Very good observation Pete - yep indeed on new geometry hardtails and FS - and the fact that I am constantly gobsmacked by the capability of them in choss and steeps means that I have some way to go in liberating untapped performance.

And I agree re ‘seemingly old skills’ - taught the Grom on hardtails so he could develop his line choice and micro-route skills. My goodness that worked….

 

[2manyoranges]

Oh .. and Peter - when you say ‘maintain momentum or stay on’ I seem to remember ‘not die’ as being the priority when on a ‘90s 26er with a 130 stem and 60mm of front travel…..

 

[raidan73]

With the younger rider having had dedicated trails, pump tracks and the likes on which to hone their skills, for the majority of their riding years, I wonder what comparisons you could draw from a day riding the varied, non bike dedicated, terrain we rode back in our youth.
I've been to BPW once and a couple of very small local trails in Cornwall a handful of times, so very little experience in other words. Wales was a couple of years ago now and my son was only 10, maybe 11, at the time and riding a 24" wheeled Vitus hardtail (a pretty decent bike for the £450 cost). Wheel size and gravity were on my side but there were times I really had to make an effort to keep up with him. The fear factor played a big part I feel. He's young and carefree and I've got more cautious with age, and it's a real effort to turn that off!

 

[The History Man]

I took my 20 something son to mayhem a few years ago. Built him a bike which he broke on the Friday so he rode mine. The Broom. He came back ashen and bloody. He now has a healthy respect for the older generation where skill and courage is concerned. He’s way fitter but far less able. Backs up your point perfectly.

 

[2manyoranges]

THM that’s a great photo and a lovely story. It’s very Zen I think. Masters do know things and should be respected. Pupils should listen and learn and then may indeed tread the path to being a Master for others. And Masters watch knowing that they will leave and be replaced by Young Ones. Although that makes me think of Shi Fu and Po and the great line: ‘I am not A big fat panda…..I am THE big fat panda…’.

I love watching my son teach really young kids in the pump track…already at 16 he is as patient with them
as I was with him. Zen.

 

[Nabeaquam]

I’m a few weeks shy of 76 and my ability to do single track has really diminished over the last two years. I’m done with it except for the beginner trails and gravel. I have no leg torque left so rocks and roots stop me on hills. I can’t keep up with my 40 year old son who almost never mountain bikes but 20 odd years ago he was on the USA ski jumping A team so he has a lot of natural physical talent. Three years ago I rode the point to point Marji Gesick, which means bad day in the local Indian dialect. This is the hardest single day bike race in the USA. People who have done Leadville and the Central American race say the Marji is way harder. I did the short race, which is the hardest last half of the 100 mile and it gets harder the further along you go. It’s advertised as 50 miles but was 63 and had almost 7,000 feet of rocks, roots and twisting climbs. I did it in 17 hours, my son 14 hours. I wasn’t last. It starts by climbing a 600 foot vertical ski hill. I walked up all the steep hills. I walked about 20 miles and lost a toe nail. I got badly chewed up crashing three times on glacial polished rock walls at night in the pouring thunderstorm freezing rain trying to walk my bike down, drop after drop after drop at the end. It goes up and down an Olympic sized ski jump as well as up and down a luge run. Ridiculously crazy is what an Olympic rider who won it called it. I can no longer do this. The secret was nutrition, knowing when to walk and not giving up. There is no DNF category, you are listed as a quitter. So, I was mentally prepared to only quit for mechanical problems or injury. With age comes experience. Most people now a days aren’t prepared to take on this level of self inflected pain so 60% were quitters. I knew it wouldn’t be worse than my army training and it wasn’t. This race is open for registration on Friday the 13th at 12:01 AM and takes a total of 666 competitors. It’s full in 3 minutes. A Brit bicycle journalist raced the 100+ mile version several years ago and wrote about it in one of the UK mountain bike magazines. If you like bad ideas there is the 200+ mile option, the out and back, twice on the point to point, but only scheduled every 5 years. Two guys I know did the 200+ on single speeds and ended out hallucinating being stalked by a cougar at night. But, how can two people have the same hallucination? The course changes with new sections each year and each year it gets harder and longer, but they still say it’s only 100 miles. There are no aid stations for hydration or medical, you are self sufficient through wilderness woods, with occasional cell phone service. It is in September, starts near the Lake Superior shore and finishes 1200 feet higher traveling through glacial scared knobs and glacial boulder out wash of the Laurentian Shield. It’s all uphill, with continuous short punchy rock and root climbs with no free trail for resting or coasting. Some of it is on dedicated machine built trails but most of it is on hand built sludge hammer, pick and shovel built trails. You better not remove a rock or root, you might be permanently banned from the trail. It can be 30 C, 5 C or freezing rain, even snow so you have to be prepared for hydration and heat control.

This summer I did a 12 hour 7 pm to 7 am time trial on a closed circuit road racing track, using a Claud Butler wood wheeled fixed gear track bike and a 1960s Belgian over geared for the fearsome hills road racer. I was standing on two hills while everyone else was rapidly spinning. I only did 108 miles and was disappointed as my goal was 130. But not many finished. A young guy in his 30s had the camp site next to me and he had a full carbon aero job and this was his first TT. When I opened my truck bed cap he asked why I had 10 bottles of water, 6 bottles of Insure Plus, 6 electrolyte drinks and several energy bars. I told him if he didn’t have all this hydration, food and electrolytes he wasn’t going to finish, and he didn’t. It started in 27 C temperatures but at night it got to 9 C. I wore a vintage reproduction Italian wool short sleeved jersey and that worked for the heat and cold. Others had to stop and put on a long sleeved layer. Old timers can rely on experience, tenacity, preparedness, increased pain tolerance and caution to occasionally best a few younger inexperienced eager beavers.

Some Marji damage to my elbow, took months to heal. Lots of bleeding from my legs and head. I did a backwards flip riding up a steep hill and landed on my back onto the top branches of an old cutdown tree. Everyone crashes and walks during the Marji. Try it, you’ll like it.