It's all downhill from here

In my previous post, I talked about how I reconnected with bikes and what drove me to buy a bike. Here, I’ll be talking about how I got to know what mountain biking is and how amazing the sport is. 

A comfortable bike 

So, after buying my first mountain bike the first thing I did was ride it on the streets of Mexico City. Yup! Because that’s what you do when you don’t know anything about mountain biking but just want to ride your bike.  

I had never heard about the sport before. It never crossed my mind to take my bike and ride it on the dirt. Then you would think, Why did he get a mountain bike? Well, I would say that a lot of regular people think that mountain bikes are just very comfortable bikes and they are good for bumpy and crapy streets like the ones in Mexico City. Also, that’s what was available plus, I didn’t do any research to ask the basic questions about bikes. That’s a bit of my personality. 

With that said, once I got the bike, my initial goal was to be able to ride for long distances so I could keep up with my partner who loved riding her bike in Toronto. So I learned about a special event that still happens every month in Mexico City where they close 50 Kilometers of main avenues for people to go out and ride their bikes, rollerblade, or just walk. 

That was the perfect set up so I took my bike and there I was, trying to complete the circuit on a heavy, small, low-pressure tire bike that I thought was going to let me pass everybody. That dream disappeared as soon as I tried to go up a bridge, I had to walk it and felt defeated. I tried many times but I didn’t know what to do with my gears and no matter what I did, I would just need to stop halfway up to walk it again. Things were not great but I wasn’t giving up, I went out and rode the circuit for two or three more months and each time, things got better and better but still, I wasn’t really riding anything extreme, just flat streets and I wasn’t not even trying to do anything different. 

Downhill? What’s that? 

Then one day, I told two friends that I was riding my bike and they were like… “Dude that’s boring, you should come with us, we do Downhill MTB”. I was like .. “you do what??” - They showed me a video, RedBull stuff you know, cool edits, amazing riders, it looked awesome but definitely far from what I was doing on my bike so there wasn’t any immediate reaction as everything felt almost unreal and possible for a human being. 

They noticed that I wasn’t super interested and that’s when they used the hook - Them: “Don’t want to do it? Maybe, you are afraid” … Me: “WTF!!! Of course, I’ll do it” -  It definitely poked me in my ego. Back then I was a rollerblader and I was proud of not being scared of doing things on my blades but being questioned by these two guys definitely pushed me to try it out. 

Two weeks later after being asked not to bring my bike because it was going to break because it wasn’t a true mountain bike, I borrowed one of theirs which had huge wheels compared to mine and it looked very clean and pretty. It was a 2011 Specialized Stumpjumper Elite (I know now more about this bike but back then it was just another bike that looked way cooler than mine). They said it was the best one for first-timers while they had their Downhill bikes, a 2010 Black Santa Cruz V10, and a 2009 Pink Kona Stinky.  

My first DH ride

They took me to a place called “El Parque San Nicolas Totolalpan” which is located in Mexico City. It is one of the places in Mexico City that if you ride mountain bikes is a must-ride on your list. It has Downhill, Enduro, and Cross country trails. It is also gated which makes it an amazing spot for people to ride safely also most of the time, the trails are improved or maintained by the local riders and the community. 

They said, the track called “La Nueva” which was its name based on some changes it went through back then, was the best one for me to try first. 

I don’t have pictures or videos of my first ride down the mountain, however, a track that for most people takes 6 mins to go from top to bottom, that day it took me 1 hour and 30 minutes, which I spent mostly on the floor eating dirt or on my feet walking my bike down features that seemed almost impossible to be ridden by anyone. I did suffer a lot that day and I can accept the fact that I did not have fun at all, BUT… there was something that just captured my soul. I can’t describe it. The adrenaline rush that I got every time I got to go down a rock or a little drop was impressive. I got hooked instantly. If you are reading this post, you know what I’m talking about. 

In case you want to watch the track la Nueva that I just mentioned, here’s a POV from an old friend called Lorena Garal who used to race with me back in the day.  

Little did I know, the sport would quickly grow in me and I would be traveling and competing across the country trying to feel better every day on my bike and challenging myself. More to come in the next blog post. 

Thanks for reading! 

Rodrigo

Ollin Hub Founder