Rather than drive to Boulder today to ride with a few other women friends, I opted instead to MTB with Ben and a few guys on the Bobcat Ridge Trail. Um, I think I might have made the wrong decision. While it’s been a blast to be on the MTB these last couple months, it kind of sucks to get completely schooled, which is 100% what happened today. Granted, it doesn’t help my situation when one of the guys on the ride went to Worlds a few years back for trials. Ok, it’s not MTB, I know, but this guy has mad, sick skills. If, for some unexpected reason, Matt didn’t clear the obstacle the first time, he would just go back a few feet and start all over clearing the section with ease…all without unclipping from his pedals. A little hop here, a little hop there, and he was turned around on the trail ready to attack the section again. And usually the obstacle he didn’t clear the first time wasn’t your typical rock but more like a BOULDER that we all thought, “sucks that that is in the way”, and then he would look at us with a goofy grin and ride up and over the top. I mean, he was riding over boulders that we would think of as more of a rock climbing challenge than a rock to RIDE OVER on a freakin’ bike! Matt would just ride his bike up one side, sit at the top perfectly poised and balanced, and then hop down the other side on his back wheel. What we all should have done today is packed up a cooler full of beer, hiked up the trail, and then let Matt put on a show for us. So many times today we were like little kids saying, “show us again, show us again”, “how in the hell did you do that”, “that was sick”, etc, etc. And really it didn’t matter if we were going up or down, Matt schooled us all. All of this from a low key, laid back, PhD student. Oh, I didn’t necessarily get to see all his wicked tricks as I was usually dusting myself off a couple k’s back from everyone else after I’d just totally ate shit for the 100th time of the day. The few brief times I got to see Matt in his element were when the guys had stopped at a tricky section and Matt was showing them for the 10th time how to clear it, allowing me enough time to catch up just as Matt bounded from the top of the boulder, landing softly and adeptly on his rear wheel, and then left me in his dust coughing and crying, “why can’t I do that?”. Well, I have to admit I knew what I was getting myself into when a few weeks ago during a city park grand opening, Matt and a teammate put on a show for an audience in the new trials area of the park. Foolishly I thought that maybe my fitness would allow me to keep up because how much fitness do you really need to jump up on 6 ft boxes, do a couple flips, and then land on 2 wheels (make that 1 wheel since he’d taken his front wheel completely off his bike)? Ha, I guess when you have more fitness than I daftly assumed AND you can ride through every technical section cleanly, without 1 single dab, you’ll probably make it much faster than myself who still dabs riding over the smallest rock. So, yes, I am still pouting as I clean my war wounds but I am still fizzing at what Matt put on display for us today. Next time, I am packing up the cooler.

-Meredith