MP3 = Faster?

Okay, I know what you're going to say. I know you're not supposed to do it and I've never done it before. I would also never do it on the road, but on a trail where I hardly ever see another rider except Chris, who's in front of me, it's different.





I wanted to try it today. It was an experiment, see? Anyway, I rode with my MP3 player. I was rocking out. Okay, so I was listening to Sugarland and John Hiatt, not exactly Iron Maiden, but that's as close to rocking out as my music library gets. I know mountain bikers don't listen to country music, but we don't need to talk about that. We also don't need to talk about how four years ago I despised country music. Let's just blame it on Chris and move on.





So, my experiment was to see if I would ride faster if I was listening to music. I'm not sure it was exactly scientific.There were an awful lot of other things factoring into it. My back didn't hurt as much as it did on Tuesday thanks to 600 mg of a lovely little nonsteroidal anti-inflamatory drug Chris likes to call Vitamin I. We were also trying to beat impending rain and a Wings game starting at 7:30.





At any rate, the verdict is that I finished the trail about 12 minutes faster than on Tuesday. Is that significant? Probably not. The music was a nice change, though, and didn't seem to hurt anything. My confidence and intenstinal fortitude seem to be increasing, too. I find myself taking the downhills and obstacles less hesitantly each time I ride. I think I'm braking about 75% as often as I was last summer. It's slow going, but it's definitely progress.