"Mountain" Biking

Kate, Dani, Sharon (me), Megan, Steph

While the topic for lecture this week was "spiritual endurance," I think that this week was filled with more physical endurance.  Kate and I went on a hike on Monday and the route that we chose went straight up, but as usual, the view from the top was spectactular.  On Wednesday, I chose boxing for my sports day.  I heard that it was a challenging workout, so why not?  Little did I know that I would be training for 2 hours.  We did about 1.5 hours of workout before trying boxing.  This was optional, but I tried it with one of the younger, sweet girls.  But she was tough!  It was so awkward for me to throw punches.  I'm not sure that I'd have to try the actual boxing part again.  But I enjoyed Tobi, the instructor who works for Tauernhof. 

And today, we went on a mountain bike ride.  I mean a mountain bike ride.  I went one other time at home, so this was only my second true mountain bike ride.  That was one thing that I wanted to do here -- to see the area by bike.  I was not disappointed.  Tobi and an older student in the class, Denis, were the leaders.  We got a few tips on technique and then we started out -- apply 70% to your front brake and 30% to your back brake.  Very helpful.  We road along the street until we came to the path.  This was a wider track and beautiful, but extremely steep.  I had to stop a few times and so did the others.  And it kept going up and up and only improved in incline slightly.  We got to a stopping point and travelled along a mountain road for a bit.  We all needed the recovery. 

Then we headed up a single track through the woods.  Tobi gave us a few more tips on riding uphill.  Pull your elbows down and have the center of your body forward over the chain.  By applying the technique, the uphill wasn't so bad.  It was the downhill on a single track that was tough.  At times, we rode along the side of the mountain with a long drop to the right.  In that moment, I didn't have time to be afraid, you just did what you needed to do.  Once on more level ground, we split up into two groups and I chose the easier route.  I can't imagine what the harder route was like.  As we headed along a road to the next path, this was one of my favorite parts of the route.  We were essentially road riding through the forest with views of the mountain.  At a brief stop, Denis reminded us to enjoy the ride, that we all need to see all the splendor that God created if we would just focus on it.  But too often we rush or let others rush us.  It was a good reminder.  We headed up to a cabin and stopped to eat our packed lunch.  This is when we looked around and saw pine trees, mountain flowers and mountain views and just sat there in awe.  One of the girls and I looked at each other and said, "we are really mountain biking through the alps" (see picture above).

I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the journey.  It didn't get any easier, it was still single track, but it we were riding through the forest, little yellow and purple flowers covering the ground and it was absolutely peaceful.  You could hear the leaves rustling slightly and you could actually hear the sound of silence.  As we rode along, those more experience in the group helped the others.  We rode over a few two plank bridges, around trees, over tree roots, and rode along a small river.  After 3 hours, mostly riding uphill, we had a nice long downhill and headed back to town to return our bike rentals.  It was the best 7.20 Euro that I ever spent.