San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
BIKING Skills can translate to other rides
to clear a tabletop jump or go around it.
Bike parks also allow for repetition, which can lead to a faster learning curve: Riding the same trail repeatedly allows users to anticipate and prepare for challenges. And there is an evident progression. Like winter ski trails, mountain bike park trails are ranked on a green (easy), blue (intermediate) and black (expert) system.
Another bonus: Skills developed in the bike park translate to cross-country trail riding. I figured this out last summer when I took my boys on more traditional rides and watched with delight as they playfully descended trails that we rode uphill to access.
It took me years to warm up to bike parks. In the early 2000s, I was an avid cross-country mountain biker living in Bend, Ore., and my friends would invite me to travel north with them to Whistler, British Columbia, to that resort’s mountain bike park. At the time, I couldn’t fathom why anyone would forgo a threehour ride in the backcountry, up and down mountains — or, in the case of Oregon, around volcanoes — just to suit up in full body armor and fling themselves off raised bridges, gap jumps and massive drops. Like some purists today, I even ridiculed the activity as “cheating,” as if there is a set of rules people must adhere to if they wish to properly ride a bike.
But something happened to my riding skills as I aged, and especially after I became a mother. I slowed down. My nerves kicked in, and previously inviting trails seemed full of hazards. At first, I mourned the loss of the mountain biker I once was, then I accepted the change, assuming that my endorphin-producing mountain biking days were behind me.
Then, in 2018, my husband suggested we take a family lesson at Trestle Bike Park in Winter Park. He was curious about the bike park phenomenon and thought this would be a good way to introduce our boys to mountain biking, because my attempts at taking them on long crosscountry rides had more or less ended in tears every time (mostly from them).
We rented bikes with big, squishy front and back shocks, donned loaner pads and bobbleheaded helmets, and hopped into a gondola with a patient instructor named Jake. It took us three hours to descend the 5-mile green run from the top of the mountain to the base — an extraordinarily long time mandated by the pace of our youngest child. I was certain they’d be bored and frustrated at the bottom, but to my delight, when we got to the resort base, the kids begged to ride up and do it again.
In the intervening years, we have paid for lessons and coaching for the kids and have ridden as a family for countless hours in the summer. At first, I simply appreciated my sons’ progression. Although their personalities are very different — one is laid-back, the other a ball of fearless energy — both began to prefer more challenging trails that they eagerly shared with us. Over time, their progress on the bike also became my own. It happened so naturally that I wasn’t even aware of it until last summer, on that fast ride down Paper Boy.
In the flow of the chase,