A Coach's Perspective

We asked some coaches to write about their experiences with The Cycle Effect. Here is another great one!Dust seems to be flying up faster, gently coating our smiles.  Bikes are rolling along the trail.   The rate at which we are pedaling has increased.  You can hear some of the team filling their lungs with our high altitude air.  You can hear some giggles.  We’re on our way back to the trailhead.  The shine of sweat is an indicator that our bodies are all working hard.  The bikes chime in with their shifting and small creaks.  It’s a rhythm we train for.  In this moment, life is perfect.  The only thing that matters is keeping up with the pack.  On this day there were close to twenty girls on the team riding their bikes.   As a coach and mentor, this is what I’ve dreamed of.  To have a team who is willing to try new things, push a little faster and laugh a lot.  We continue to pedal up, down, and over obstacles.  Until the familiar noise of my own biking experiences rings true.  That uneasy sound of a body hitting and skidding along the earth.  My heart instantly sank.  My mind says “this is not why I signed up to coach for The Cycle Effect.”  I ditch my bike and run up to the 7th-grade girl who lays eight feet from her bike.  We were on a downhill slope at that moment and she’s covered head to toe in our valley’s red dust.  Her lungs are trying to find that sweet air again.  The other riders are on the side of the trail, wide-eyed, looking back at her, then I, with fear.  My heart started beating faster.  As I’ve gotten to know these girls overtime, I want to protect them from pain and hardships.  But in my own personal growth through mountain biking, I’ve learned that like life, sometimes we fall.  And in falling, it’s how we respond and move forward.  In this dirt covered girl, I see myself.  With a deep breath, I ask “are you ok?”  Her first response is only a head nod.  Then she sits up, shifts her head and smiles at me.  Her elbow is bleeding and in my quick assessment, that’s what she’ll walk away with today.  Her smile carries her to standing now, looking at her bike and then back at her team she excitedly exclaims, “that was awesome!”  The girls burst into giggle mode and help clean off their teammate.  As I reminisce about this moment, it is clear to me that this is exactly why I signed up to coach for The Cycle Effect.  Because when I was their age I needed an outlet, a team, mentors, and people to talk to other than my parents.  I needed support when I fell, I needed exercise and the outdoors.  Everyone does!  In this past season, we had a handful of falls and we had hundreds of successes.  We had countless positive interactions and daily achievements.  We pedaled forward, through a few scrapes and dusty falls and together as a team made ourselves better people, stronger students, move involved community members and maybe, just maybe faster mountain bikers!