I rarely listened in English lessons and find it hard to believe my two finger typing technique could input much more than a login name and password! I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this and those who read my previous post on celebrating your wins. I really appreciated the feedback that came my way so please feel free to leave any additional thoughts and comments below or in the land of Facebook.

For my second post I wanted to keep the good vibes going. Goal setting can be tricky business and I feel like many people look at it in a way that sets them up for failure, rather than success; and if not failure, maybe just a feeling of stagnation or poor performance. A simple re-alignment of your goals can be the difference between feeling like you are reaching new heights and feeling like your progression is stuck in the mud.

Having recently turned my attention away from my own skills development to begin focusing on helping others, I often feel like I am going backwards on the bike. This year, for the first time, I am eligible to compete in the Veterans category and I think we can all agree that age and accumulating responsibilities outside of racing are two of the most worn out excuses on the trails. And I have certainly claimed them both myself! In recent times, I have been having to put my ego aside and accepting that some things that were once well within my level of ability are now outside of my skill set. It’s not easy and, at times, extremely frustrating and demoralising. Personal anecdotes aside, many riders at every level go through peaks and troughs in their careers and for many different reasons. While enjoying the good times is easy, it can be difficult to find satisfaction when things aren’t going so smoothly on the bike.

Celebrating personal wins is something that mountain bikers do best. It’s not just our own achievements that get us pumped, but others’ too. When things are going well, it’s high fives all around! But it’s pretty easy to get down on your riding too. Sometimes we just have a bad day, conditions aren’t great, we haven’t been riding much, or maybe one section of trail is just psyching us out big time. It’s times like these we can become fixated on the bad stuff and forget to pat ourselves on the back for the good things we do…