Impressions; Thank you.

 My first smile after the fear was gone. © Katrin Stöhr

Oh no, more than one post a month, no good! Waking up at 4:40am and not falling asleep after an exhausting weekend because my brain is exploding with thoughts, no good either. This huge overflow of thoughts made my fingers so eager to hit the keyboard that I already have to get everything out.

Yesterday, the last race of the iXS German Downhill Cup took place. Not the last race of my season, but the last race of the big season. 

I hinted in my last post that right now is not the ideal time for the relationship between me and my bike. Even if writing down that my doubts are caused by irrational emotions and that none of them are necessary helped me a lot, I still struggle hard to withdraw myself from them. 

The good news is, I finally finished one race, the race yesterday. The bad news is, I'm back to zero. Back to where I was when everything started. And I think it's time for me, to write it out.

The thing with my overthinking comes with a lot of self-consciousness and self-doubt, which is not really a good combination. The older I get, the better I deal with it, I do my best to be a better person every day and work on myself as hard as I can. I grew a lot of tolerance towards myself which also led to a big tolerance towards everything and everybody else around me which in turn led to a kind of inner peace. 

But then there is this thing with riding. 

I clearly remember the moment eight (!) years ago, when my hands touched the bars of a Mountainbike for the first time and I felt that I finally found my missing piece.
One week later I broke my collarbone for the first time. 

These two moments are the best representatives of all the eight years on my bike: Heaven and Hell.

And when I think about it right now, I honestly have no answer why I kept riding back then. The only thing I remember is the ridiculous amount of effort I gave to keep riding. It just meant everything to me. My several injuries and surgeries in my first years led to a lot of headwinds, especially in my family. My passion got judged as a phase of puberty, as a rebellion against my parents, as a stupid mood that would go away, I was basically ridiculed every day. In school, I was the weirdo wearing boxer shorts under her pants who only had one topic to talk about: her bike. (I still love you guys, HOPE!)
Also under my riding-friends, I was the clumsy, half-assed bitch who constantly broke her collarbone. 

But when I sat on my bike, put my feet on the pedal and did the first pedal strokes, nothing mattered anymore. Every single time I thought everything was worth it. Heaven and Hell.

The hardest thing for me was and still is hurting my mom. She always suffered under a huge amount of sorrow every time I went out with my bike. I started lying a lot, telling I would to something else instead of riding, I hid every bruise and I even tried to hide my second fracture. I didn't want her to worry but I couldn't quit either. Heaven and Hell. 

Someday we found a way, I took care and my mom started tolerating it and I got used to being completely alone and without any support, I myself was my biggest fan. Just me and my bike.

But there were always periods where all the wounds and fights forced me on my knees, when standing against the constant headwind got exhausting. I wanted to quit so often. These moments when I realized that I don't make any progress, that everything I did bored me. But I also was too scared to take the next step. This was usually the moment when I changed the discipline which only helped for a certain period of time. I basically ran away. In combination with my deliberation, this mindset developed into a control issue over the years. Every step forward was a potential danger. 

All of this was meant to change when I first met the people who I am allowed to call my loveliest friends now. When my last boyfriend (I don't like the word 'ex') and I went on our first bike trip together in Lac Blanc, I met this his friends, this huge crowd of crazy people, and they welcomed me so warmly. The moment when all of them waited for me at the chairlift and waved at me was the BEST thing ever, nobody did that for me before. We rode the whole day together in our big group and I was never this happy on my bike. But not only them, also my boyfriend was patient and supportive, showing me lines and techniques and acting SO cute when he asked if it was ok to ride without me. Unconditional support for the first time and I finally realized how much I needed that. Half a year later I moved to the town where all this lovely people live, my boyfriend wasn't my boyfriend anymore but the happiness stayed. I felt welcome. And at home. So amazing!

Hometrails absurfen von Prezi - Mehr Mountainbike-Videos

I finally found the courage to move forward, I got faster and better on the bike, I started to reach my dream to ride the way I knew I could. Because there was a handful of people who believed in me. Even my mom was proud of me, showing around pictures of me riding and making them her screensaver. I felt (and still feel) so incredibly blessed.

I even got so cocky that I wanted to start racing again, so I registered for some races.

And as if I wasn't lucky enough, already on the first race this year I found my "racing-family", a handful of amazing people who took me under their wing. Also with incredible, unconditional support. (Coffee in the morning, cooking dinner, fixing my bike, packing my stuff, bathing in rivers, taking pictures of me...Thank you so, so much.) I really struggle to find the right words to describe the gratefulness I feel every day.

©extreme-pics.de / Benjamin Prescher

So, where are we now? I finished one of four races, I crashed countless times, I was shaken with fear over the last few weeks, all of my progress is gone. How did that happen? I got pushed back into my headwind-tunnel and I immediately ate shit, helpless without my safety-cushions.

Because even with the greatest amount of support and love, change doesn't come overnight. 

For me, every ride is a fight. I have good days when I can turn off my head and I have the days when I burst into tears because I feel the blockage coming up, which are actually the most days. 

I take this baggage on every ride with me and to be honest, I don't know how to get rid of it.

© Katrin Stöhr

But there are also a few things I know: Last weekend, I got from shaking fear on the first day to a 20-sec improvement on the last day and all thanks to the kind words of all the people around me. 

I sat in the chairlift and the nice guy next to me asked how I feel on the track and when I told him that I was  scared as hell, he told me to just keep riding, no matter how fast and one moment the fear will be gone - and he was right. (Thank you Mr. Unknown)

My result was SO bad, but everybody around me was supportive and lovely and to be honest, this was exactly what I needed because I still don't know what to do next.

I feel like quitting again, I'm starting from zero. AGAIN. There's no way to run now, this is the end. 

Three choices: Quitting, stop acting like a crybaby or leaving it how it is. 

Somebody said, there's a difference between quitting and letting go. Maybe I should finally let go. 

But no matter what, all I want to say is thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For every single lovely word, hug, text, call. Especially the hugs, they mean the most to me. Thank you. 

You all have no idea how happy you make me!

Support the people you love. And also the people you don't love, you never know how badly somebody needs a few kind words. Be tolerant, be kind. Always. It can change peoples lives! 

Love,

pwp

Impressions; Progression Doesn't Come Without Consequences

Hello again! It's been almost half a year since I wrote something!

To be honest, I was a bit happy about it because (as you may remember from another post) this blog was kind of a tool to help me deal with things going on in my head. Over the past months I learned to deal with things the grown-up way, sometimes well, sometimes not, but I did.

Same thing with riding bikes, this year I found a new point of view on it and this is what I love about this sport. I fell in love with riding all over again,  but this time in a more grown-up way as well. But this grown-up way also meant a much more intense level of love (this actually sounds like a relationship-story, maybe I should honestly start considering being an objectophile) which basically meant: If I didn't get on my bike for more than a few days, I felt like total crap.

Of course I have been asking myself if I was compensating something else with it, but I didn't want to waste time on thinking about it so I didn't matter. But now I sit here, having a hard time using the keyboard because I feel the ligaments of my shoulder moving around weirdly, as they are not where they are supposed to be. I crashed several times the last week and to be honest I don't even care apart from the fact that I have to take a break.

After I've spent so so many years in my comfort zone under the slogan 'Riding slow is better than not riding at all' I got fed up with it this year!

First step was getting a downhill bike again. But not just any bike, I finally bought the bike of my

dreams: The Norco Aurum! I dreamed about this bike the day it was presented.

Second step: competing in races. More than one race a year. The race calendar of the iXS German Downhill Cup offered some promising, fun stops so everything looked fine for this year!

I had so many awesome days in bike parks, on local trails or where ever I shoved my bike to but the racing thing just wouldn't work out.

It's useless to talk about every single race in detail but they have all one thing in common: I didn't finish one of them. The only race I felt comfy with ended up with a flat tire in the racerun! But that's racing right?

The main thing I had to fight with this year, was to push myself out of my comfort zone. Over the last SIX years, I didn't crash ONCE. Six years ago, 2009, was the year with my last bad injury which involved two surgeries and a long healing process. Nothing really bad, but with a lot of bad luck. 

There were a lot of people around me who made me think my body wouldn't be able to take another crash and I believed them. I was scared as hell. But there was the other side, the side that just could not live without mountain biking. So I tried to find a way to ride anyways, I adjusted my speed to a comfortable level in which I wouldn't crash. But these six years were also pure hell. I didn't ride the tracks I wanted to ride, I did't take the jumps I knew I could do, I didn't race the races I wanted to race. I wanted to quit so often because it felt like hell being at the same level for six years. Not just the same level, there were times where my riding got even worse. 

But not riding was even MORE worse, so I continued. Continued choosing the the lesser of two evils: Riding in my warm, cosy comfort zone. In 2011 I even decided to start riding downhill because I felt there is where my passion lives. And I always told myself that slow progress is the safe progress. But there wasn't any.

I grew up mentally and physically over the years, I got confident with me and my life, with my decisions and my safety-plan just didn't fit anymore so I finally decided to take a step further. It was too late for all of my dreams but I thought better late than never. I saw it as a mental challenge. A challenge for progress, for change. And I also felt like I had the support from my friends and family which made me feel so happy and secure.

But it wasn't easy at all. To gain speed and deal with it, I failed completely. 

I always stopped myself the moment I thought it worked out pretty well.

It's a vicious circle because I'm getting scared everytime I'm getting faster. I feel my body working with the speed, knowing how to move my bike, feeling secure but after a good run I'm always like 'whoa, I've gotta take it slow next time' - One step forward, two steps back. 

So I took it a step further and pushed myself even if I thought about taking it slow, I pedaled harder and forced myself out of my safety-cushions. The results: Several crashes. But it felt so good. I felt that my body could take it, that I could take it. Of course I was scared afterwards and I couldn't deal with the consequences immediately but it felt so liberating. Knowing I could take it. 

Several months ago, when I was dealing with a heavy amount of anxiety of crashing I asked a friend who is racing really successfully and she said: Sometimes it's good to crash, it let's you know that it's not that bad at all. And she was right.

And I wanted to work from here. The next mental challenge, the next step.

But then I got pushed back into the dark hole of self-doubt: Everything I do is useless, its useless what I love about this sport. I'm embarrassing myself, I'm stupid and reckless. Harming my body this way.

That is not true.

I am aware of the fact that my level of riding is nowhere near to be acknowledged but that's not what this is about. This is about myself, finding the way out of the jungle of my endless thoughts. I know that riding my bike is the key to letting go. To set my mind to peace. To get rid of my control issues.

I think a lot about motivation, pushing yourself, I think about it 24/7. I think about everything I do every second, every day. I think about possible scenarios instead of doing it. 

And I know the solution is the complete opposite - to stop thinking.

But this is me, thinking for at least 3 people at the same time. 

Over all these years I was so confident about the fact that I would find a way to match my mind with my body, to teach myself how to let go, but with deliberation. Without crashing.

When you read the last sentence you obviously find the paradoxon: You can't let go with deliberation.

Go big or go home. 

I am the master of my mind. I make the decisions and I still choose to take it slow.
But I still want to change that. I just need a new game plan.

You all may be aware of my BSFL (Brandon-Semenuk-Fangirling-Level) but in this video, Brett Rheeder has a lot of really inspiring things to say, which also led me back to my path. Thank you for that.

Agricultural Education: The Brett Rheeder Story from Freehub Magazine on Vimeo.

Last but not least: The soundtrack to my mood.



Love,
pwp

Off-Topic; Essen Motor Show 2014

Ever since I got my drivers license, another stupid, ridiculously expensive industry draw my interest: Cars.
Don't get me wrong, not the 'OMG look at those rims, daaamn check out the V8, aaaaaw yeaaaaah AMG bro!'-kind of liking cars, I prefer slight understatement wagons and engines around 2.0 l and 170-220 PS, like the Volvo V60, Skoda Octavia RS or the BMW 320d.
Another question for 'what the fck is wrong with me?'-category but then I think about my passion for Grey's Anatomy, Sex and the City, baby cats and the movie LOL (the original version not the messed miley-cyrus-one) and calm down again.

Anyways, I absolutely wanted to visit the Essen Motor Show, I can't remember the last time I went to a trade show. It was kind of smaller than I expected and I'm still a rookie, so I just wandered around and took pictures of what I was interested in.
Suprisingly, Skoda presented the best booth in my opinion (they had free slushies! And the hostesses were wearing clothes which actually covered their bodies!).
I really like the brand and their refreshed line, huge props to the marketing head. (VW...'cough)
As I follow the Rally circuit (WRC and ERC) for over a year now, another highlight for me was to see the new Fabia R5 without the prototype paintjob (even if I'm sure the only R5 thing about this R5 was the body, haha).
BMW was lined up pretty nicely, too, but I don't like their new 'signature-white'.
The rest was filled with the standard stuff: Formula One, DTM, a few Dakar rigs (only a month left now!) classic cars, hot rods, motorcycles, merch, rims, suspension, etc.

My highlight was the drift show in the middle of the trade, even if I don't like this drifting-jdm-stuff, the skills these guys showed were incredible!
The guy with the LED's on his BMW absolutely won the style award but the two japanese rigs, a Toyota GT86 and a Mitsubishi FTO (I did a little research, this Mitsu has a Nissan RB25DET engine AND was reconstructed to rear wheel drive, seriously crazy shit and it absolutely sounded like it, too) totally smashed the hall (and my ears) with their exploding turbos. 

The lightning was really really bad for taking pictures with my poor equipment, so only a few (hardly edited) pics made it here...I should've taken my small digicam with me, this little magic wand.

All in all, a really cool side trip into the world of cars! But I'm gonna keep spending all my money on bikes I think, haha, even if I can't wait to put my feet on the pedals of my dream car...someday.

Love,

pwp

Photo Material; Gratitude

Today I went on a trip trough the rural area around me called Bergisches Land. I just never stop being fascinated by the endless beauty of the landscape right at my doorstep, so I took my mom with me to show her why I love my home so much. We both felt like kids again, shoving our hands through irish moss, spotting fly agarics and wild blueberries. Such a lovely day!
Actually I don't really need to travel the world, I felt like I walked through Norway and Canada within minutes today.

I really don't know how to show my gratitude someway other than just showing that I make use of one of the best things that happened to me this year. I'm not a photographer nor do I ever plan to be one, but having a small DSLR Camera that I can play around with, a Nikon D50, is absolutely amazing. You sharpen your eye and your view for the world around you, I love it!
I love learning new things, thank you so so so much for giving me that opportunity, Vanessa.

Love,
pwp

Photo Material; Hafjell - Learning By Doing

These pictures are the result of one of the most exciting things that I experienced in Hafjell.
I accompanied Nathan Hughes at his work.
Nathan is a professional photographer who reports about the UCI Downhill World Cup for pinkbike.com. The days before I noticed that sports photography really is an art in itself so it felt like a nice coincidence that he agreed taking me with him.
Expensive equipment already does half of the work but Nathan explained to me what makes a picture 'look professional'. So he thrusted me his second camera in my hands, adjusted the basic things for me and I tried to capture what I imagined to be decent. I got caught by a lot of beginners luck I think, maybe the fact that I ride myself and follow a lot of photography blogs helped me, but I basically just pushed the button.
Due to the fact that I won't be able to pursue the field of sports photography for now (even if I really started to like it) I experimented around with the pictures I took and didn't put a watermark on them.
I also took a few others on my Dirt Mag Intern Blog, feel free to check them out.

The main reason I upload hits stuff is, that I hope I could make at least one rider happy! I like making people happy. So feel free to share, use, copy...whatever you like! You can contact me here if you want one of the pics in full resolution. Just do me the favor and tell your friends that there's a cool blog waiting on this URL... haha.

And don't you dare to forget to check out Nathans Photo Epic Days on Pinkbike! Pure art.

Love,

pwp

Off-Topic: My Nutrition

Before I start, I would like to mention that I'm no expert or specialist in this field who would like to tell you how to eat, I just want to take the chance to sum up what I learned over the years.

If you remember my last post, I want to change my habit to downplay important factors! Due to the fact that I grew up with a lot of vegetables, fresh cooked meals and a varying but always healthy cuisine (Thank you so much, mom!) I never thought about nutrition as an important factor of a healthy lifestyle, it simply was the food my mom cooked.

But from my teenage years until my twenties I gained over 12kg (25lbs) and I always thought the reason was that I stopped doing sports on a daily basis but now that I think back, I see that the real cause was my nutrition. I ate outside a lot, loved fast food and sweets. I still loved my moms food, but I loved the unhealthy stuff even more. My skin also suffered under my eating habits, I have to fight acne to this day.

I don't know how or why it happened that I started to engage myself with the topic of nutrition, I just remember that it wasn't my weight but my decision to ban all my cosmetic products and switch to natural cosmetics. Animal cruelty in cosmetics is a topic that is really important to me, I'm aware of the fact that other industries will always make use of animal testing but cosmetics are an unnecessary item of our lives, which makes, as far as I can see, animal cruelty in this industry equally unnecessary, but that's another topic.

When you get to animal testing, you also get to topics like factory farming and food industries.

The more I went on with my research, the more I felt the urge to stop eating all that crap. But like with anything else, I needed time to completely implement my idea of a healthy diet.

There were extreme times where I only ate rice and leek because I didn't know what to buy without remorse and there was the opposite where I jacked it all in and got back to pizza and burgers.
Over the years I found some kind of balance and approached my first steps like eating less wheat, less sweets, less fast food, more vegetables and doing more sports again. The results came in and I lost weight, my skin got better, I engaged with weight training which influenced my diet positively, too.
But my biggest problem stayed: No matter what you buy, be it vegetables, meat, fish, dairy goods, everything led to some kind of cruelty, be it mass husbandry, misuse of antibiotics, monocultures, wood clearing...I felt like nothing would help, no matter what I eat. But thanks to some recent happenings, I found a way to live with it.

At first I accepted that the only way to save the world would be to eat nothing so I cut down my diet to four areas: vegetables, meat, dairy products and grains. I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, I consider myself as 'conscious-eating' - being aware of what I buy, eat and where it comes from.

Furthermore, I wanted to consider the factor of weight training and muscle development.

To me, dairy products are worse than eating meat, so I cut down dairy products to curd (protein source) and sour cream (I just need it). Plus, oat milk tastes SO much better! I eat meat once a week or less (B12 and protein source) and I changed from wheat to spelt (also a great protein source).

Vegetables are my nourishment No.1 and let me tell you, buying 'organic' in the supermarket is a big lie - so finding a source that I am satisfied with was a tough cookie - fortunately the solution found me instead!

Due to research for my bachelor degree, I discovered the term 'Community Supported Agriculture' (CSA in short, SoLaWi in Germany, Teikei in Japan) and as fate willed...I discovered a CSA-farm in my neighbouring town. At first I went there for research, but it quickly developed into a long-term cooperation. Summarily, I pay the farmers for a year, help on the farm together with the community and I get fresh, organic greens in reward.

If you already asked yourself why I constantly post a bunch of greens on my Instagram Account... this is it and it's amazing! The gardening on the fields is a great activity! The greens are incredibly tasty and finally - harmless. I can watch my food grow! You also learn about the great effort vegetable cultivation takes (it's a hell of a lot of work I can tell you!) and you economically support your local area.

If you want to know more about the topic CSA...check out several links:

CSA - The American Version
Teikei - The Japanese Version
SoLaWi - The German Version

My CSA-Farm: Bioland Gärtnerei Ischebeck

My first crop

Peppermint I cultivated from a bunch 

I'm far away from eating completely healthy, I still have a big big weakness for sweets and other snacks, I still buy several industrial processed items and eat outside...but step by step, my organic heart beats louder. I like to learn about processing fresh greens and do more things myself instead of buying them.

Again, I want to underline, that my way is not the perfect/ultimate/right one. I respect every vegan and vegetarian for their ability to completely cut out several items and I also respect everybody who doesn't want to deal with the topic of nutrition.

But there is one thing we all can't deny: Healthy nutrition is incredibly important!

Love,
pwp

Action; Finally Free

I still can't believe it - I got my driver's licence! And a car!
After 12 days, I already made over 1500km, almost all of it for riding my bike somewhere. I really don't know how to describe this feeling, to be able to ride whenever I feel the need to. Pure happiness!
The final missing piece of the puzzle.
I'm aware of the fact that for most of the people it's completely unspectacular to drive a car, but to me it's a complete blessing.
So today I finally visited the home trail of my girl Kathi and we seized the moment for some pictures.
The mood of the light totally reminded me of my timeless favourite 'Deep Summer Slide show' with Brandon Semenuk. Too bad we're not in Whistler!





The music comes with a classic today, I have no USB port on my car radio, so I got all of the CD's Kathi had left - this one was my favourite.
Enjoy!

This time, I unfortunately didn't manage to capture Kathi properly...photography really isn't my thing.
Thank you so much for taking tons of great shots of me instead!!

Love,
pwp