We’re back from our WLC August board retreat brimming with ideas for the rest of the year and into 2027. We invite you to stay tuned to this newsletter and our website for updates on all our activities in the coming weeks.

Below is another essay as part of our series of newsletters from our board. Author Lauri Mackey is a new board member working with our sponsorships team.

My husband and I were part of a mountain bike coaching team for a local middle school and high school for five years and it was a wonderful experience. One of the lessons we taught was how to shift gears going uphill without too much pressure so that your bike chain didn’t pop off.

There are so many lessons in mountain biking: anticipating the climbs so you shift before you need it. Not shifting too soon, because that higher gear will get you moving with momentum before the climb. Then there’s the shifting on the climb itself. You can’t shift when you have too much weight on the pedals, or you’ll be grinding your way up.

The worst thing? You’re in the wrong gear (too hard!) and you stop completely. Do you know how hard it is to restart your bike on a hill?

In addition to shifting before you actually need to, there is another movement that can help. You pedal hard, ease up just a tad, shift, then let the shift happen by slowly turning those cranks with your pedals. Then once you shift, you go hard again. In a race, this slight movement can make all the difference between making it to the finish line or dropping out because you broke your chain or, worse, stopped and fell.

We always loved to hold up printed signs during our kids’ races to cheer them on. At the bottom of the hardest hill, we’d hold a sign that read “I love hills, I love to climb.” The kids knew a hill was coming, they remembered to shift, and best of all, they learned to love those climbs.

Mountain biking is a lot like life itself. When we’re on our own healing journey, this equates to forward progress. You learn to shift as needed as you anticipate the hard climbs. You may need to shift again during the climb itself. (Sound familiar?) Then it’s time to ease up a bit, make the shift, let that gear fall into place, then go hard again. The goal is to keep the chain from breaking or from stopping completely. Sometimes it’s the difference between letting things happen and making things happen.

Learn to shift, get good at it, then learn to love it. I promise it will make both mountain biking and life a lot easier!

Warmly,
Lauri Mackey
Sponsorship Director