An attempt to describe my age as the composite of a fit 32 year old man with the mind of a 13 year old failed to illicit the hoped for response. It was strongly mooted that only if I paid random passers by to shout ‘hey Al you’re looking damn good for 30‘ and really upped my maturity game could this age denialfantasycome to pass.

Even then, it would be a stretch. But that’s the problem with growing older without growing up. Most of us in our middle years still feel about sixteen inside unti we try something physically difficult. Like bending down. My favourite definition of middle age is ‘you cannot stand up without making a noise‘, which in my case is the grunt of effort accompanied by a creaking knee, clicking ankle and graunching shoulder.

Again the hoped for wisdom, gravitas, having the slightest clue of how I should run my life failed to be mentally unwrapped on my birthday, so – listening to that inner teenager – I went to play outside instead. Because, while the weather had continued to moistly disappoint, the summer is moving on and with it the evening light and elevated temperatures. If I don’t shift my ravaged carcass now, what chance come winter?

Another joy of advancing years is as what little remaining hair makes a run for the shower plug, karmic balance insists on adding the tyre of fadingmetabolisms around the middle. To be fair even the most active fifteen year old with a hummingbird genome would struggle to work off my Scone, Cheese and Wine diet greedily imbued on holiday.

A shifty glance in the mirror suggested bigger trousers were on the horizon unless I fancied grooving the middle aged sloping chest/straining button look so seemingly cherished by many my age. I’m sure that as I turned away in disgust, the fat bit over the belt hung about for another second before centrifugal force wrenched it back. Bit of a relief the ensuing Newtonic reaction didn’t throw me down the stairs.

So shorts snugly fitted, a bike selected from the ‘shed of dreams‘ and a tootle out to the Malverns where fat bodies/tired legs are found out in the turn of a pedal. A quick up and down suggested the few rides shoehorned in this last ten days had at leastgainstayed the rasping breath/burning legs of a non riding man. Still always room for improvement of bike if not rider and, as a birthday present, Martin lent me his very capable Orange 5 for a quick blast.

Not so quick uphill. It’s a bit of a pig frankly. But shod with what I assume are recycled tractor tyres and with a frame welded by a blind man working deep in the remains of the Ark Royal, it’s never going to be a sprinter.Aestheticallyit’s somewhere between industrial chic and mind-bleachingly ugly so the best place to view it from is definitely on top.

I wasn’t feeling much love even from that position tho, with Martin sprinting away on my ST4 declaring it ‘fast, fun and poppy’ which is everything the 5 isn’t. Having finally winched myself to the top of a rocky descent, the time had come to remove ever withering brain, pick an object on the far horizon and see what a super stiff frame suspended on six inches of clever shock trickery could do.

It could scare me that’s for sure. Only at warp speed does this bike make sense. Any less and there’s nothing apparently happening as fat baby-head rocks and wheel sized drops are dispatched with nothing more than a feeling of sinking gently into a sofa. I knew the ST4 was a little bit flexy, but this thing is stiff beyond belief. The only feeling of speed – other than landscape being thrust at overrun optical nerves – is the noise. It’s very much like piloting an old steel filing cabinet being thrown down a metal fire escape.

As I watched Martin find the limits of my ST4, it would have been easy to go quicker. But foolish. In a moment of clarity, I realised the reason the ST4 is such a great bike for me is exactly because it does have limits that provide a perfect excuse not to go any faster. The 5 is a brilliant – if simple – piece of honed engineering, but it only makes sense if you are the type of rider who craves speed over everything else.

I’m happy to say that rider isn’t me anymore. Probably never was. Swapping bikes back, I watched Martin create an effortless gap between us on the next descent clearly defining him as exactly that type of speed freak. Fast I like, insanely fast I’ll leave to everyone else including my younger self. But that’s not going to stop me getting on a bike at every opportunity and tweaking the nose of terror. Before running away.

Ten years ago when I fetched my old rigid mountain bike out of the shed and set out , helmetless, clueless and without a thought where this may lead, the only thing of certainty was this pastime couldn’t extend beyond 45 years old. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And on that basis, it’s probably time to go and play outside again.

With comic timing, my ropey music collection threw this track up from the legendary if aged rockers AC/DC* as a ferocious storm was thrown down from under a brutal sky. The car rocked to the beat of a stubborn jet stream as endless rain cascaded manically seeking out something dry to wet. It was at least a month too late with everything horizontal either saturated or already under water.

My resolve to ride wasn’t tested though. Sufficient time had passed to dull the memory of a desperate trudge on washed out trails being chased by vengeful weather systems. Since then, scheduled rides have taken rain checks with the only sunny evening spent instead getting fat on summer beer. I had worked out that waiting for the rain to stop would mean my next ride might be in October. Or Spain.

So it was with low expectations I headed deep into soaking hills fully grim-equipped with winter boots, waterproof socks and shorts, stout rain jacket and full on mud tyres. These expectations were more than met with the full shitty experience from trenchfoot through gritty arse crack, 6 foot or organic mud pack, boil in the bag sweating and occasional progress hard earned on slop where dust should be. This was setting up to be one of those death marches which fully tests the rule that ‘riding is always better than not riding‘

It didn’t. And not for the reasons you might think. After an hour of sliding around in obvious distress, we found a track deep in mud and possibility. Tracing it back through face high stingers, we were rewarded with a line of jumps and drops that – with a little light shovel work – have the potential to be full on shits and giggles. But that’s not the real reason either.

Ask any rider what they love about Mountain Biking and themes will coalesce around rock-hard trails, dust, drifting tyres, jumps and drops, perfect sunsets, summer breezes, a thin ribbon of dirt snaking through the bluebells, the bullshit of your friends, the oh-fuck-me not quite crash moments, the glove-tan, the oh-so-earned post ride cold ones. the craic, the new bikes, the old bikes, the places you’ve been and those you will one day go.

If alcohol is involved, a whiff of pretension will waft eulogies on being out there, being something others are not, surfing on the wave of differentiation, the impossible to explain joy of riding bikes. I get all that, of course I do, and if you’ve ever ridden a bike for fun not transport you’ll get that too. And we’ll talk of mountain biking and an antithesis of our stressful lives, every pedal revolution unwinding the ball of weekday angst bound tight in heads too full of the wrong stuff.

And we’d be wrong. Absolutely and utterly. Missed the point by about 30 years. Because if you distil riding bikes into its purest form, you won’t find any of those things. It is nothing more than playing outside with a bit of the possibility of adventure thrown in. This base element is packaged for 11 year old children and that’s why we love it. Well it’s why I love it anyway and if you don’t, there is nothing you will read next that can convince you otherwise. And for that you have my sympathy

Mountain Biking is marketed as an arms race. New is good, different is better, you’re one credit card transaction from nirvana. You’re one skills course from riding perfection. You’re one winter training ride from the podium, one muscle supplement from a perfect athlete, one visualisation from a perfect downhill run. Spend, Train, Work your way to being the best you can. Because when you’re there, then you are absolutely there, nothing can make it any better. Except maybe hitting reset and starting the whole thing again. No wonder it’s called a cycle.

I’m calling that bollocks and bullshit. It’s about feeling eleven years old. It’s about playing outside when you should be doing something adult and responsible. It’s about exploring and making fishy ‘new line’ gestures, giggling and pointing. I’m lucky enough to be a parent of a child that age and I envy her view on the world; it’s exciting, it’s ever different, it’s relentlessly positive, it’s going to change and I’m ready to change with it, it’s simple and I know what I like, but I might like something else tomorrow. Bring it on.

Next month I’ll be 45 years old. I don’t care about that while I can still ride my mountain bike. Because that connects me to the eleven year old that laughs when he falls off, tramps off up unlikely looking paths with a spring in his step, rides back down them foot out and grinning. Christ, I’ll go and build a den if I like. It’s not a middle aged crisis or a second childhood – it’s making bloody sure you don’t lose sight of the first one. It’s not serious and it’s not competitive, and it’s not a salve for a distressed moral conscience.

It’s playing outside with your friends. And a bicycle. There is no mud, rain or cold that can touch that.

Thunderstruck? You bet.

* A bit like myself. Old, passed their best, living on past glories, quite loud. Difference being the ‘legendary’ bit.

There are times when nothing other than riding a bike makes any sense. Endless sunny days where the trail is polished, buff-dry singletrack and you’ve discovered your inner riding God*, when you’re best mates are on top joshing form and all that stands between you and a few cold beers are hours of high speed, endorphin pumping mountain biking nirvana.

Those are the days when you absolutely have to ride. Then, right in the middle of your cycling bell curve, are days when you should be riding. Be it a ‘get-my-arse-out-of-this-comfy-bed‘ commute, or an evening blast when you’re so tired from work, or slashing your weekend to-do list with a sword of selfishness and getting back two hours after you promised. Rides that are easily bypassed by thin excuses, but everyone missed is a lament, a regret of what might have been.

And then there’s riding when you’re sick, it’s dark and wintry, cold hands fumble easy summer tasks, legs hurt from the start, breath rasps in a death rattle on every climb, tyres squirm and slide through mud and grime. Drivetrains visibily erode under corrosive grit forged from wet dirt and rock. You’re half as fast as the summer and twice as knackered. Descents that are baked into a sun kissed ribbon of joy become desperate ‘hang on and hope‘ under the grim clag of winter.

You return home totally done in, but long gone is throwing the bike in the shed and grabbing a cold one. Now it’s a logistical sequence of frozen hosepipes and clammy clothes. Standing in the midst of steaming ride gear and dripping bike, a beer is the last thing on your mind. Or at least behind, a bath, an excuse for why the washing machine is going to be broken, a mental tally of components needs replacing and the worry that non responsive toes might be a symptom of frostbite or trenchfoot.

Mentalists will regale you with the joys of winter riding. Fitness, blah, deserted trails, Yeah Yeah, amazing moonscapes, whatever you fucking hippy. They miss the point, the reason we ‘normals‘ ride in winter is simply because we need to. Not have to, not want to, not should do. Need. Riding bikes is a balance to the lunacy of what we spend our day doing. A see-saw with frustration, angst and irritation that needs a wheeled offset to leave you refreshed and level headed.

It is far to easy to attempt equalisation by kicking the cat, shouting at the kids, grumpily watching TV clutching a grape placebo. None of this stuff works like a mud splattered two hours with those who share your weekly therapy session. This week, one new bike was sailing on a muddy maiden voyage accompanied by two hacking coughs, one set of recently serviced forks, a non working rear brake and our Malvern Labrador SuperFit team member knackered by lots of training.

So we didn’t go that far. But we didn’t go to the pub either which was my first, second and oft repeated idea. Instead slithery progress was made on trails glassed with tractionless dirt to the inevitable accompaniment of poorly a-tyred mountain biker on tree. My lack of rear brake was easily offset by a mud tyre on the front which carved inside a man on all-weather** rubber to set up perfectly for a) a fab jump over a tree route and b) an accident.

A committed if foolhardy approach to a) failed to result in b) only because Fate clearly believes I’ve suffered enough lately. No way that closing my eyes and bracing for impact kept me on a trail bounded by sharp fences and eye-pokey branches. The fact that I then nearly wiped Martin and his new bike out in the ensuing “whooooaahhhsshiittnooooIvegotit………..probably” slide shows that particular God has a sense of humour.

As did we on our heavy legged return to the warmth of inside. If I had control of Wikipedia then the Mountain Biking entry would read lit 1/to gain a sense of perspective, to remember what’s important 2/to prevent obsession of unimportant things 3/ to stave off comformity.

20 kilometres on a Mountain Bike while racked with cold can do that. I’ve changed my mind about it being therapy. It’s better than that.

* who may still be a bit rubbish. But he’s better than you are that’s all that matters.

** If all-weather means Summer. In California.