As someone who has both lived with routines that were engraved into my life and as someone ever holding a shoehorn, looking for where to fit my rides in, there is value in having a dedicated routine. Not having to think about wardrobe because today’s weather is the same as yesterday’s, not hitching the transition from getting dressed to filling bottles, not pumping up tires because it’s only been 24 hours since they were last pumped, that seamlessness shortens the distance between A (want ride) to B (on ride).
As a road rider those routines extended to which rides I did—the Pier Ride on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Coffee Crew on Fridays, the Donut Ride on Saturdays and The Kettle ride on Sundays.
But that’s where the routine ended, and that little detail is critical to where I’m going. In talking to cyclists everywhere, their enjoyment of the sport always boils down to the same desire: Flow. It’s known by more names than Beelzebub, but is easier to identify than pornography.
And here’s the thing: Every group ride is different every time it rolls. That’s why you can ride the same exact route with the same exact bunch of cyclists a 100 times and have 100 different experiences. Even if every other rider did their best to replicate a previous ride down to the last acceleration and line through each turn, it still wouldn’t be the same. That variation keeps us in the moment, keeps us guessing, reading the group.
Where someone chooses to sit in the group is the result of balancing the Challenge-Skill Matrix. When we don’t experience enough stimulation we grow bored. Think flat, straight road, alone. If the challenge is too great though, we end up a stressed-out, quivering mess. Think trying to race the last kilometer of a stage of the Tour de France. On those rides, I was comfortable moving around the group, slipping through holes, and closing gaps when they opened. But I had a Cat. 1 sprinter friend who’d raced on the U.S. National Team and he could slip through holes that I didn’t think existed. On the occasions I tried to follow him, I always gave up before arriving at the front, happy to let another foot or two yawn between my front wheel and the rear wheel I was following.
What I find frustrating is how preparation routine is helpful to our riding life, but route routine paves a path straight to boredom.
Provided you ride with a group, that interplay with other riders can help, but the nature of singletrack is that we often take the same line through each section of trail, though I never seem to manage to take the same line through a rock garden, but it’s also true that I’ve never managed to ride a rock garden in flow. Mountain biking does carry a big advantage when it comes to flow: moving in three dimensions is a powerful flow trigger. Any time I’m in the air that helps drive me into flow, so long as it isn’t the same jump I did the day before.
Unfortunately, for anyone riding a mountain bike solo, the answer to the pursuit of flow is the need to vary routes and not take the same lap every day. This helps flow in another way: The more we ride the same trails, the more routine they become, and the more the challenge erodes. Not riding a trail but once a week helps to keep it fresh.
Managing our flow triggers is yet another expression of the Challenge-Skill Matrix.