I'm no longer “saving my brakes”...

Before this mountain-bike season, I would generally play “chicken” with the use of my brakes, thinking that the less I would use them, the longer the pads would last.

This often made me go a tad faster than I should have and also gave me a surge of adrenaline when I wasn't looking for it. Now, safety is winning over excitement in the adrenaline store and I now brake much more liberally that I used to.

This doesn't mean that I ride at snail-pace down the mountain, but I now behave more like a grown man and significantly less faster than the adolescent I still was only a couple of years ago.

I aged impressively fast!