When I was a skateboarder, back during the era of shows like Three’s Company, we talked constantly about the style of the great skaters of the era. From Stacy Peralta to Tony Alva, we gleaned all we could of their style from … still photographs. Lo, several decades later, I began to see actual film and video of them and watched with rapture as I began to appreciate how it wasn’t that they moved, it was the way they moved that gave them style.
To be clear, I realized that my friends and I had known nothing of style. We had no clue about the authority and aggressive way that Tony Alva moved, or how Stacy Peralta really did look like he was dancing on a wave in Santa Monica Bay. We thought style was just throwing moves.
Despite that cluelessness, when I began mountain biking in the 1980s, we knew one of the riders in our cohort had style. John Heeren was the badass among us. He was an all-around athlete, wind surfing when he wasn’t pedaling and moving with swagger full time.
On our Monday night rides we’d meet at Shelby Farms in Memphis and there could be some friendly jostling as we rolled toward the entrance to the trails. We jostled (or sprinted) because we wanted to be on John’s wheels and rarely did he roll out in any position than numero uno. We all knew one basic truth: To be on John’s wheel was to be faster than usual. Simply riding second wheel meant following the fastest guy there was.
The riding on the blue and yellow trails in Shelby Farms was then and is now defined by singletrack that is tight as the fit of a tubeless tire. Rarely were the trails wide enough to pass and our undergrowth did not permit passing. Greenery draped all the wheel-grabbing brush that would bring the errant pilot to a stop.
Back then, John rode a Cannondale that was a full size, possibly two, too small for him. It seems crazy now—26-in. wheels, a bar 4 inches lower than his saddle, a 140mm stem—but the trails of Shelby Farms wound like your small intestine. Trails ran straight for … never. There was one connector trail atop a dike that ran Army Corps of Engineer straight, all else twisted like sheet metal in a tornado.
And that too-small bike was a key piece of John’s success. Was he stronger than us? Unquestionably. He could have ridden away from most of us on any trail, but on the twistiest stuff at the Farms, he pulled away with each turn. John understood that the smaller the bike, the shorter the wheelbase, so it could carve tighter turns. He kept his tire pressure low to keep them grabbing the loose, often muddy soil in which we rode and he never, ever stopped pedaling. No matter how much he leaned his bike over, he never stopped pedaling.
What I didn’t appreciate then was how John’s upper body and head didn’t move. His hips could have been dancing the tango, but his upper body stayed true—the lean was in the bike, his weight above those tires, his pedals turning like a Waring blender. Back then I didn’t appreciate that he tended to stay in smaller gears and never stopped pedaling. He was skateboarder fluid.
Those of us left in his exhaust would sprint out of each turn, get on the brakes at the next turn—possibly just 8 ft. later—hit the brakes, carve the turn and sprint, yet again. It was exhausting.
Last night, tired from a day of inventorying and documenting my mother’s china and crystal, I needed a break before dinner and I rolled down to the trails. Too tired to go hard, I simply pedaled. Thinking back on John and how he never stopped pedaling, I decided in my depleted state to keep my pace light, but my pedal stroke smooth and consistent as a recovery ride. On 29-in. wheels and on a bike with a wheelbase longer than the GT Avalanche I rode back then, my bike was not designed for shimmying down these trails. And to be clear, I was not making a physical effort. I was there to shut my brain up, to drown out the voice cataloguing all that needs to be sold, ignoring all that needs to be tossed, worrying about all that I’m not getting done on the West Coast.
But as I said, I decided to keep pedaling whenever I could. Honestly, the challenge was perfect. It kept me focused on the trail, on my bike’s lean, and my body’s position over the tires. And that was just the focus I needed. After a couple of frustrating turns, I slowed down ever so slightly and like a soap bubble popping, I dropped into flow and the next half hour disappeared.
I record my rides because I record my rides. I’m not reviewing them with any particular agenda, but I like having a record of how much I’m riding. When I went to stop the Strava app on my phone and save it, shock and amazement washed over me as counted the five PRs on trails that I have absolutely attacked in a fit state. I slowed down, gave up the need to sprint out of each turn and covered the miles in the shortest time I’ve ever recorded and arrived home relaxed as if I’d taken a walk.
As I settled into bed, and thought back on those early rides, I realized that even when I was watching someone in real time, I didn’t understand style. I didn’t understand how the way an athlete moves might be more than personality, that it might be efficiency, that it might express physics in harmony. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but my brain recorded it all, even if I didn’t know what I was seeing.
We often referred to John’s style as flowy. It was truer than we knew.