… and at some point you need to pick up the phone. Because what the old bugger is saying is that you are also an old bugger. Which translates to what defines your last  thirty years of your life is now mutable. The thing you were is no longer the thing you are.

This is not a happy call to take. I’ve been ignoring it even when the beat of reason and rationale was strumming at my door.  Eventually tho, you pick up the receiver and this is what it says.

There’s a moment in every long‑time mountain biker’s life when you realise the numbers no longer add up. Riding those bigs days, the 50km loops, the 1,200m+ slogs, the one more climb, that used to be a badge of honour, are getting harder. Not impossible. Just… heavier. Like someone quietly added a few extra kilos to your bike when you weren’t looking. And took a similar amount of power from your legs.

And because this is how you see yourself, defines a lot of what you are and makes you not like almost everyone else, you really don’t want to admit that. You don’t want to be that rider. The one who plugs in and goes electric.* The one who “gives up.” The one who turns up on a bike with a motor and a battery and a faint whiff of betrayal. And guilt. You’ve let yourself down, you’ve let… you know the drill.

So you do what any sensible**, stubborn, ageing rider does: Start researching e‑bikes in a curious but not compelled state of mind. Wowser, when did all this shit happen? Torque, power, battery capacity, a whole load of metrics that should not be part of my world.  Purity meets marketing, Really what the hell am I doing here? I can barely navigate electronic shifting.

But you’re not researching, you’re negotiating with yourself.  Strip it back and it’s a simple question: “Can I buy  an e‑bike without losing that rather important part which thinks of yourself as a real mountain biker?”   I have history here, breaking my collarbone also broke the link between what I thought I was and what I was doing. Coming back, it felt way too hard. But that’s going to pass, right? I’ll get that fitness back for those big days, that unbottleable feeling of 360 degree giving zero fucks to those who use age as an excuse.

Eight 1000m+ climbs so far this year. Each one leaving me mostly bereft of independent movement the day after. A few teeth grittingly “will I make it home? ” bastards-  way beyond T2 fun. The riding tho is still life affirming stuff- the people you ride with, the places you plant your tyres, the sketchy moments, the bullshit, the sense of  community and place. The post ride beers and the long rides home.

That feels like home. Feels important, feels like a massive hole if it it ever stops. Hard to reconcile all of that with these last two climbs are not worth whatever waits at the top. We already ride in a “mixed environment” of eBikes and non Es. This is only going one way, but I know those in the Non E group will consider my amp-y schism a bit of a betrayal.

And they’d be right. Kind of. We’re all thankfully built different and I’ve always prioritised being clever and lazy over actual hard work.  While there is something righteous about kicking back against the zeitgeist electrically cresting the hill, there is also a discussion to be had around which parts of riding MTBs do I love most.

Spoiler: It’s not grinding up a 20 min fireroad. It’s not wondering what else I could do on a Sunday other than lie in bed with legs of jelly. It’s not living a bit of a lie that smashing out massive days stopped being fun quite a while ago. I think coming back from all that time off didn’t tell me anything new, it’s just accelerated a trajectory already guiltily lodged in my thoughts.

As Hemmingway said about bankruptcy, it happens very slowly and then all at once.  And after a week riding mind blowing trails in the South Tyrol, epiphany turned up about day 3. The eBike I was riding took me to places not accessible without a motor. And I was having such an amazing time. It was bonkers fun. Pretty much undistllled joy. I had almost forgotten how that felt.

What I wasn’t having were feelings of guilt. Which pangs of which were very much my unwanted companions as I’m whooping up well known hills today in the manner of a twelve year old on his first ride in the woods. There’s probably something trite about ebikes keeping you young, but more important – for me anyway – is the joy of riding bikes can be graded on an exponential curve when climbing is still an effort but not a chore.

Your elevation may differ. And that’s fine. I’ve been in the vanguard of the “point and laugh” cohort whenever some fat bloke pretends ebikes are somehow as “worthy” as proper mountain bikes. A bit of me is still in there. Zoom out tho, it’s all riding bikes and that is officially a good thing, Maybe I won’t be working so hard, likely switching to my pantheon of fantastic non ebikes shall remind me of the folly of electrical assistance. Regrets wait in the wings, maybe choosing a new way now means no way back.

But for 90 minutes today, I felt 12 years old. Or 25 with endless strength and no boundaries. I’m not sure if it’s the end of something, or the start of something else. But I’m not going to die wondering.

*went well for Bob Dylan 😉

**A stretch I accept.