Look Where You Want to Go

When I first started in the sport of cycling about 9 years ago, I was very nervous about hitting things I didn’t want to – trees, holes, rocks, drainage grates, or pillars depending on whether I was riding on the road or on a trail. The thing I noticed was that if I focused on the obstacle by looking down at it, more often than not I hit it. Of course, this convinced me even more that I needed to be ultra safe or I’d be doomed (much like the mother in A Christmas Story who is convinced Ralphie will “shoot his eye out” if he gets the BB Gun), I continued to concentrate even harder on the obstacle. You can guess what happened. I hit more rocks, holes, and tree roots while narrowly avoiding the really painful obstacles like poles, trees, and cars (thank goodness). It didn’t take me long to figure out both by trial and error and by reading bicycling magazines that you need to look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go. Alas, the moment I started looking ahead of the obstacle and envisioning a clear, clean line to ride past the obstacle, miraculously I breezed by without incident. As I got more experienced I not only...