therein lay the crux for me....training in isolation your yardstick for measuring performance become somewhat skewed since you only have your own level of suffering to gauge your efforts....im still of the opinion that i sort of suck at mountain bike riding because only a few times have i ridden with other people and wasnt really on my game those times but talking to people at the trailhead and running into the strava-geeks and hearing their times on the same trails and realizing im faster than the self proclaimed strava champ at these runs got me thinking and i ended up timing myself on the beginners course and im only like 10 minutes off the winning times but i dont really know the back half of the trail but im pretty sure some repeated runs to get it dialed in and i could actually win which has made me sort of lose interest in actually competing except i finally realized its one thing to just pound it out with brute force but another thing entirely to do it with style and grace...i ditched the full suspension bike as too much of a crutch...its easy when its just point and pedal,too easy really,technique does come into play,but not in nearly the same way as a single speed rigid frame bike....you have to dance with the terrain,not just roll right over it...more about flow and form...finding the perfect line,the most efficient way to use that one single gear...and then the fat bike is just redonkulous,low speed earth crawler extraordinaire...and yet still a ton of fun to ride,goes anywhere i can pedal it....yep,big ride coming up,probably 5-6 hours of saddle time,8 hours in total after breaks to eat and the like...im having 4-5000 calorie days riding a bike that curb weights around 65-70 pounds...big days,tough to stay powered up and not bonk out...ride,eat,ride,eat....all i can do when i get home is smoke bowl after bowl and eat...
