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Last weekend started off pretty average. I had a massive hangover despite how much I don’t want to drink alcohol any more. Go figure. It was an average night in the end, and I paid the price for it on Saturday.

Come Sunday though, the boys and I got together early in the morning and drove up to our local downhill track – Fox Creek. Fox Creek has multiple downhill trails, that you can “shuttle” with a car and a trailer. While I love my fitness, pushing a downhill bike up a hill is just too hard, and leaves you with no energy to barrel down it again.

We got around 12 runs in, and I had an absolute ball. While I’m well and truly rusty at doing jumps and drops at speed, it didn’t matter. I did what I felt comfortable doing (and from time to time what I wasn’t comfortable doing) and got such a rush all I wanted to do was hit it again and again!

About 3/4 through the day we took a break and I had time to think – “This is what I want from life!”. Every day we do such mundane tasks to pass the time, but getting a solid dose of adrenaline just removes all of the negativity in our life. Doing things that make us feel alive is what helps us to break the mold. I personally want to go to the grave knowing that I have truly enjoyed my time on earth. I’m not saying that it has to be to the “extreme”, but just doing things that you genuinely enjoy.

Everyone has their own hobbies that give them something. For me, riding makes me feel alive, and gives me a sense of freedom. Freedom is so important to me. When I’m barelling down a hill, I can choose my lines, hit one of the three jumps, and so on – freedom in a sense. Whatever you need from life – just do it.

For me, I live to ride, and ride to live.

I went to a going away party last Saturday night and drank enough to have a hangover. While I had fun, I was planning on an enjoyable morning of trail-building and mountain biking on Sunday. I enjoyed both “events”, but it is obvious to me that mountain biking and digging trails is clearly more important to me than drinking myself stupid. By drinking on Saturday night, I just made the next day a much bigger challenge that it should have been, and in turn didn’t enjoy it anywhere near as much as I should have.

Over the last six months or so my drinking has declined more and more. Maybe I’m “growing up”, but I think my priorities have just shifted…

I have mentioned earlier that I’m not a very competitive person. I have no need to win an Elite race on my bike, but I love the idea of being fit enough to do so. Fitness is becoming more and more important to me, and I’m only really starting to learn this now.

Now I know everyone says “I’m never drinking again” after they have a big night of binge drinking – I’m not saying that. I think I’m just over the big nights. A couple of beers here and there are cool, but I don’t want to mess up my body’s hydration completely. My weekends are very important to me – the things that I live for are outside, in the hills just taking it all in. When I wake up with a hangover on a Sunday, the day is wasted and it will be another week until I get the chance to live again.

Now, avoiding the binge drinking sessions – that’s where the real challenge lies. Here goes!

I raced in a mountain biking event last Saturday. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m not that into the competitive side of the racing, but just go out as I feel some sort of obligation to do so.

About half way through the second lap I was really in the zone. While riding at “race pace”, I was still able to take in my surroundings and enjoy what I was doing. Every part of the track was beautiful. Some areas quite wet with beautiful scrub-land around it, other areas almost like forest, and other areas more open and rocky.

As I raced, I thought to myself “there really is no better way to see the world than on a bike”. It doesn’t matter if it’s a road bike, mountain bike, touring bike, geared, single-speed, whatever. If it has two wheels and somehow resembles the original bicycle, I can appreciate it.

Live to ride, ride to live!

When I was a kid I was always competitive. I competed in athletics and always wanted to win. Back then I think it was just because I was given the opportunity to compete in an event, and as far as I knew, you only ever competed to come first.

Through the later school years and a year or so after leaving school, I was finding my place in life. It was hard to see mates getting handouts from their parents while I had to work my ass off to get anything, and even then I couldn’t compete in their world.

Nowadays though, I see that everything I’ve been through has taught me some serious lessons. Small lessons like appreciation for money, but more importantly knowing what is actually important to me.

Time after time back in the day, I’d be annoyed that I didn’t have something that one of my mates had, when in reality although it would be nice to have, it wasn’t really that important. (Eg. a mate gets a nice new skateboard from his parents, but I can’t afford one so I don’t get one – in reality I was never into skating anyway). Nowadays, it’s financially a lot easier for me to buy something just because the next person has bought it, in “keeping up appearances”. I used to do this, but now I’m over it – as far as I see it, it’s just another form of competition.

Buying a nicer car, renovating the house or moving to a more upmarket suburb. Even just the places that you go out to dinner. It’s fine when you’re making the choices for yourself, but it’s crazy if you’re just doing something for first place in the game of life.

I know a couple that live well outside of their means, just to try and keep up with the rest of their family. The whole family competes constantly. Houses, cars, TV’s, computers, and now children. You name it, they’ll all try and outdo each other. It’s sad really, because when they actually want to do something, they can’t afford it or don’t have the time, because they commit so much of their resources to their competitive lifestyle. They end up living someone else’s life and not the life that they truly want to live.

I had a (cross country) mountain bike race on yesterday. My first race since last year and in a higher class than before. It was a real challenge for me, but I realised a lot of things while I was racing. A fair few of them unrelated to this post (things about technique, etc) but most importantly that I wasn’t really that interested in winning. I’m more of an “I wonder how fast I am” racer. It’s a personal challenge more than anything else for me. Sometimes when it comes to sport I wonder if I should try and be more competitive, but really, why? For the kudos of other people? I just want to go out and ride, and do the best that I can. If my best is first place, great, if it’s 20th, fine. I came 7th on the weekend.

I’m happy with where I’m at. Sure, a bit of competition in sport is healthy, but to me not being too competitive in life means staying true to what you actually want, rather than living a life of competition between friends, family and colleagues. It means you can live the life that you want, not what others want you to live. I couldn’t think of a better way to live really..