Robyn Williams spent half of her youth with her head under water, fighting ear infections and costume tans, but with a mother who is a world champion triathlete she couldn’t completely escape the world of bikes.
I dabbled in triathlon a bit during my school years before choosing triathlon as my main sport when I took up a triathlon bursary at the University of Pretoria in 2008.
Fast forward to 2012 and I had just returned to Cape Town after an amazing gap year spent racing triathlons in Germany. In comparison to the structure and frequency of the German racing I was disillusioned with Olympic distance elite racing in SA and wondering why I was still doing the sport. My new coach suggested I try mountain biking as it would allow me to do some different racing and training.
I hated mountain biking.
I had a retardedly heavy farm gate of a bike and my coach in Pretoria had made me go out on it every now and then in winter. I remember almost crying with frustration! Having taken my MTB out to Table Mountain alone, I’d uncleated on a loose climb and couldn’t get started again. I had to push my bike all the way to the top. Frustration deluxe!
I thought that maybe a 29er would give me the extra confidence, as well as the extra traction needed. I arranged a test bike for a morning and my uncle took me to Tokai to try it out. For the first time I thought that this might be something I could enjoy. I started looking for a bike to buy. In the meantime my coach made me enter an off-road triathlon. The Wednesday before the race I still didn’t have a bike. By Thursday my mom had contributed some money towards the bike and I was the proud owner of a little hardtail. Now to ride the thing…
As you might imagine the race was a disaster – I crashed three times and ended up with heat stroke. I had no clue, but I was absolutely hooked. Not because I was good at mountain biking. The polar opposite in fact. I was terrible. But I think that was what drew me in. I had never wanted to conquer something like I wanted to conquer the technical aspects of MTBing. Most things come easily to me, but this was the first thing that I really wanted to be good at that I wasn’t.
People will tell you to keep at it. That it takes time. I tried to be patient, but the scabs on my knees never had time to heal before I’d break the skin again. I had never felt so useless or frustrated in my entire life. I wanted to be a MTBer! I eventually got myself a set of knee pads. I went on a skills clinic where I concussed myself in my effort to get it right. I seemed hopeless. A total klutz.
But ever so slowly I started to improve. I’d count the number of times that I would uncleat on a piece of singletrack and be utterly stoked if I decreased the number by one. I started using Strava to track my improvement on technical pieces and I started keeping up on group rides. My confidence grew.
The thrill of conquering a piece of singletrack that you used to uncleat at is indescribable. My motto used to be “there is absolutely nothing that I cannot walk down.” I’ve come a long way since then. It hasn’t been easy, I’ve added many, many scars to my knees and elbows, but I have persevered. There is absolutely nothing that compares to the thrill of MTBing! I recently raced my first MTB cross-country and the high that I got from completing the race lasted for days. My sense of self-preservation is far too high for me to ever be a technical genius and I still wear my knee pads when I need some extra confidence.
The one piece of equipment that has helped me immensely is my dropper seatpost. Coming from a road bike background I find that I am very static on the bike, not moving my weight around at all. The dropper seat post allows me to get the saddle out of the way, move around the bike more and conquer more techy things.
MTB long ride adventures with friends rank right at the top of my list of all-time best experiences. Although I’ve concussed myself, cracked 2 helmets and fallen more times than I can count, I love it. MTB gave me a new lease on triathlon and I am loving the chilled off-road culture that comes with getting dirty.
Come on girls! Join me on the trails.
[author image=”https://fullsus.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Robyn-head-shot.jpg” ]Robyn Williams is currently finishing up her Master’s Thesis in Financial Risk at Stellenbosch University, so she’s always happy to embrace the distraction offered by her bikes. She’s a brand ambassador for Specialized Bicycles and Freewheel Cycology and you can follow her on Twitter @RobsWilliams. [/author]
