Mountain biking with 5% vision, challenge accepted!

Life with 5% vision is full of challenges that I don’t get to pick but mountain biking, wow, how can I not try it? My boyfriend gave me a mountain bike, best graduation gift ever!!   

There are some pretty cool mountain bike roads where I live. Funny, because some of them are close to the city and I have never noticed them before!   

(This photo was taken after my first mountain bike ride, don't mind my clothes, this is what I had from running and race biking haha, soon I will buy some better stuff)

I would never bike alone, that’s not very safe so my boyfriend and I do a lot of fun activities together. He knows me so well (we’ve been together for 6,5 years now) so he knows exactly when to warn me for things like bumps, holes, poles and so on. (Side story: Once I didn’t listen to him because I thought I saw the thing that he warned me for…. Buuuuuut… I didn’t see it and I biked right against it with my knee! I couldn’t walk the day after that incident haha, whoops!)   

My first experience with mountain biking was a true adventure haha. I kept saying to myself (out loud) ‘I CAN DO THIS, I CAN DO THIS!’ Mountain biking is just such a different experience compared to my normal bike and my race bike. There was so much going on right in front of me that I could not (yet?) anticipate on what was coming next. E.g., when I was concentrating on not slipping in the dirt and watching out for some holes, I had to make more speed to bike over this big bump. I have trouble seeing things from further away and being able to do that on a mountain bike would come in handy haha, like trees or turns. But like I said, challenge accepted!   

I didn’t fell! Well, not completely at least haha. I almost went down about 4 times but luckily I didn’t. Besides the fact that I really have to learn how to mountain bike, I think I also need more guts. No, I DEFINITELY know I need more guts. One moment I thought to myself: It is okay to fall, let it happen if it comes down to it. But the other moment (when I was actually almost falling) I thought to myself: NOOOOOOO, I’m not ready!

I couldn’t go very fast through the woods because I don’t know the roads yet, they were all new to me. I had trouble seeing where the bike path was because the contrast is not always clear in the woods, sometimes there were hardly any paths at all to follow. That is when I was super concentrated and I made these weird faces that looked like I was going to die or something haha. On my normal bike, in a familiar environment, I can bike pretty fast (as I am with a lot of things… if I do something, I am very fanatic). So when I have biked the mountain bike roads more often, I think I will do better the next time because I remember the roads.   

Although I was scared for like 80% of the ride, I was also amazed of how awesome it is and especially when returning safely at home, I knew for sure that I am going to do this more often!   

Do you have (mountain) biking experiences? And do you have any tips for me?