Age and fear

I spun some laps at Cahuilla about a year ago and it was the last time I rode a dirt bike. After breaking 13 bones over the course of 15 years of riding and racing, I am simply over it. I don't want to be injured again and have lost the desire to get comfortable again on a track. I felt incredibly uneasy the entire time I was riding. First time I've ever felt that way on a dirt bike and it was a telling sign that it's time to hang it up. I still absolutely love motocross but I'll be a spectator and fan from now on. Maybe go on some trail rides. No more motocross for me. My health is too important.

Lot's of great suggestions from many of us in the MX-Geezer crowd !!

I'm a bit envious of some of you that keep rocking it on a motocross track in your 50's, 60's, and 70+ !! That is simply awesome and I always envisioned myself doing the same (and maybe I might find myself out on a track again-- who knows). I'm in my mid-50's and I probably would only race Vintage MX if I were to return to actual racing. That is where I left off- as it presented a safer alternative to needing to jump and clear things on the track. You also aren't dealing with a bunch of teens and younger dudes thinking they are due the next factory ride. And while there are still some fast guy in Vintage MX still out there to get their first place plaque- in general I found the racing to be more "sportsman-type" where you are basically out there to have fun.

Lots of others have mentioned off-road as an alternative and this is where I found myself in my early 40's feeling much the same way the OP stated he felt. For me- besides the fact I wasn't wanting to or feeling the need to launch everything on a MX track anymore- I also had finally soured on the effort exerted versus the thrill received from prepping, packing, traveling, and WAITING all day at a MX track. As a kid and younger man I did not mind it. But in my 40's I was not digging the typical MX day experience anymore. Usually this consisted of a 20 minute practice with WAY TOO many people of all skill-sets (from first time Novice racers doing unpredictable things to local-pros sneaking a couple hot laps), followed by a 4-5 lap first moto at 1:30pm and a cut-down 3 lap second moto after the sun set because the day ran too long! Can anyone else relate? LOL!!

Anyway- Off road presented a much higher degree of opportunity to actually ride. Whether it's a local hare scrambles, a more challenging GNCC (or similar) event, an organized dual sport, or a just-for-fun trip to a trail system with your buddies- "off-road" encompasses lots of riding opportunities. Yes you can still get hurt- just like you can at any point any day- but you also are still out on a motorcycle having fun exploring, hanging with buddies, etc.

Whether you continue with MX, or try some other types of racing or riding- the important thing is to have fun and enjoy it. The way I look at it- it was all of my early years of MX racing that introduced and lead me to continue to find a way to still be around and ride motorcycles and continue to get great enjoyment out of the various experiences. So even if I don't ever find myself on a MX track racing again- its still feeding my current interests and enjoyment but just in a different way now.

I am 56 as well. Used to be intermediate level at the local tracks here for 20 years when I was younger. I now just look forward to riding a bitchen bike, getting out under the trees, through some creeks and streams, some good single track and then stopping to a destination where there's some food. That's my new riding regiment. LOL

At this point after all the crazy crap I used to do, I am very thankful to be walking and have the ability to enjoy life relatively healthy.

There’s a lot good stuff in here; but, ultimately there’s a simple answer from my experience…

The older I get, the more time it takes me to “get back on it” or to feel good and loose after time off of the bike or track 

I broke my hand/fingers on The Rip to Cabo on April 21. I’m just getting back to riding. I know that after 2+ months off, it’ll take a while to feel “loose” again. 

This time I did something different that’s been mentioned in here…I got a Husky e-MTB. It’s certainly made a difference. I’ve ridden my ADV a little bit during my injury-time-off and can honesty say that even that helps me stay connected with my Moto mindset. 

At 60, my riding seems to require more time invested in conditioning and staying in shape than it did just a few years ago. In the big picture…? That seems like a good thing. 
 

Will be 60 shortly...my goal is to make it to 75 and still be riding Try vintage mx it's a blast and great atmosphere. My motto is now

"Heed the master or wear the plaster"

Still like to jump just do what I feel safe doing.  NOTHING beats railing the perfect berm for me now....unfortunately I suck at it

It doesn't always take drugs. My 60 YO brother was tested as low T and he went full carnivore. Three months later his testosterone levels were smack dab in the middle of normal. The food we eat is poison. 

Exactly-

The older I get (just turned 50 last week) the longer it takes me to get up to speed and comfortable doing jumps I was doing the year before. And to be honest some I may never do again..
 

Racing +40, +45 and finally +50 this weekend!

I am still as competitive as ever and still get just as nervous, but also willing to give up a spot or two just to not take an extra risk…

Be glad you have the instinct for self-preservation. When I ride, I'm never thinking about my wife or kids or responsibilities... I found out the hard way last fall that I don't bounce back like I used to. Still gonna send it, though. (I'm 52 now.) 

I try to stay in good shape and do as many physical activities as possible. Through my early 40's I never backed off of bigger hits or sketchy riding. Some injuries got me started in thinking about backing off because I am the soul provider for my family and if I don't work we don't eat and healing comes much-much slower now. Major back surgery really slowed me for a brief period but I'm back to wfo now. My son has been asking more and more recently to get back on the bike and I'm probably going to do it but I hate getting waxed by a cocky 13 year old lol. 

So on the 4th my son talked enough trash that I stopped working on the house and jumped on his pit'r to give him a run for the money. It lasted about a minute before I crashed and hobbled off. I guess baby steps is better suited for my old ass now lmao. 

I'm 38 and will be coming off a 9 month hiatus due to injury. Before I was injured I was faster than I had ever been... Now I've been sitting around thinking about riding/racing again, the speed, and the jumps I was clearing before I was out.

It's kinda scary, to be honest. I've been going to a lot of races and watching the guys in my class ride and I find myself wondering how I was going that fast.

I'm back on the bike next month and I'll spending the rest of the year getting back up to speed. I'm just hoping when I start taking gate drops again I'm not finding myself back in the Novice class.

Going thru this myself this year after a long time away from MX. I was fine with aging and fear, not doing the jumps etc but am now just recovering after getting spit off on some big rollers.....@70kph, bike kicked 90'deg and I went high side airborne landing on face on big jump. (Sudden stop) Knocked out and now a little rattled/sore -  now what.

My problem is 100% a me problem (i know) i still have a competitive nature and like racing. I know i'm a vet and i know i'm way slower than glory days and am ok with this........my problem is i like to ride as fast as i can go and struggle to ride around at 80-90% effort. How do u guys tackle this ?  

I started riding bike parks a year ago and have crashed a few times. Ever time I thought: oh no, this is going to hurt… and then it was half bad. You just go half the speed, jumps are not even close in size and still it’s fun and exciting. I even went over the bars into a rock section and came out okay. 
I bought a Levo SL and couldn’t be happier! Try it out. Go to a bike park, rent a bike and go for it. 

This 👆🏻

My rule is 3rd lap 3rd session, if I haven’t done it by then it’s not happening that day… the jump will be there next time, NBD.

Interesting topic. I’m 45 and have had two stand out moments where I became fearful. 1st after we had our first kid. This wasn’t necessarily fear but just felt no need to take risks but it faded after a little while.

Second time was in my late 30s, started to feel real fear before I even arrived at the track. Had to have a little heart to heart with myself and sack up and face the fear. It was either that or pack it in. You can ride without taking risks but cannot ride with fear in you. If that ever happens and I’m unable to shake it, at that point I pack it in and find a different discipline but I’ll never quit riding completely. What kind of life is that.

One issue I find after decades in the sport is I have seen so much (turning 56 this month). I have seen so many ways to get hurt on a bike, and witnessed or heard about so many people being hurt or worse. The Internet doesn't help. It's always been a mental struggle but being older and having people that directly rely on me makes it tougher to get out there and send it. I already have a hip replacement too from a crash in 2003. I'll probably go with more trail riding.

There's a lot going on here, not least that the judgment part of the brain doesn't typically fully mature until mid 20s.  Also, for me at least, as I get older I realize how little time we're allotted, and that a couple of years of combined recovery/rehab actually may have more personal cost in time than in money.

It's important to be objective about risk when others depend on you, or you have a sense of what would be a meaningful life with an injury and no riding versus no injury and no riding.  Keeping in mind that not riding is no guarantee that injury won't find some other way to bite.

Can't emphasize how important disability insurance is to quality of life after injury or illness, just watch for sport exclusions.

Also, take it a day at a time.  You don't have to decide today not to ride again forever.  You can decide not to ride today and leave open tomorrow.

Do longer motos and you'll have to back it down to keep a decent pace.  Get one of those lap timers for your crossbar pad (mypitboard.com) and make game of being consistent for a long moto.

What they don't tell you about low T is that your eye muscles get weaker and things seem to move faster. Getting correct T levels helps that a lot and things start to slow down again like when you were younger.

I’m 34 so a little younger than you guys. Thanks to YouTube I’m much faster now than I was when I rode 15 years ago. 
 

I think everyone around this sport all the time is so desensitized to just how fucking big these jumps are. Even on a local level. I can jump most every jump on most tracks. Once I click 4th or even the top range of third gear I just think to myself, why, and get never come up with a good enough reason. 

With age comes a cage. Time to buy a stock car. 

No low test is real. For me it effects how much balls I have, balance, eye sight, bed room performance, weight gain, muscle mass, energy levels, less pain in joints and from old injuries. I have been on and off it 3 times. Working on getting back on. I feel a huge difference. My family Dr works with me and we check my levels every 3 months when I am on it. It also helps with my diabetes. 

I've got pix of me jumping stuff in my 20's, if I didn't know it's me and I actually did it, I wouldn't believe it.

No way in hell I would do it now.

that's sort of the dilemma right, stop riding dirt bikes, mtbing, skiing or snowboarding, whatever is considered risky, and then boom, you get in a car wreck, slip in the shower, or worse case cancer or other disease.  All that risk aversion was pointless.  reality we don't really know what the future holds for any of us.  yeah makes sense to manage risks and quality of life, but that doesn't guarantee anything.  being 60 and going for that 60 foot gap double is not worth it to me, but I still get a lot of enjoyment hitting those tabletops and ripping a corner.  Also we do DH MTB and same thing, manage the risk best you can.

sitting on a couch, living in a bubble does not seem like an option I would like.

When you find the right track , it makes all the difference in the world! A combination of fun and somewhat challenging! That’s my 2c

Welcome to +50, still want to line up at least once in that class. Turing 52 later this year, some reason keep coming up with excuses as something always comes up….maybe see you one of these times!

I'm only 27 but struggle with this too. It's frustrating as hell rolling around the track not jumping things and feeling like a total goon. I don't know if there's a solution other than to gas it and maybe follow someone off of a new jump first. Like others mentioned, seat time definitely helps. Hope you are able to overcome it and ride for fun. Its not like we're getting paid to do this. Also, if you're trying to ride a main/pro/big track and you're not enjoying it I would suggest you go cruise around on a vet/intermediate style track. That's what I do and it's a ton of fun. 

32 here and though I seem to be one of the youngest one commenting in this thread I fit into this way too well. Haven’t been on a bike in over a year now and before that I was only riding 3-4 times a year if I was lucky. I have really struggled the last 2-3 years when I do go riding. Takes me all day to even feel somewhat comfortable enough jumping anything that isn’t a tabletop and it really ruins the day for me, making it feel like a huge waste. It’s super frustrating and I’ve really been struggling to find the will to go ride a track now that I am in a spot to start riding again. Hopefully some consistent seat time will change that. 

Freshly minted 60 YO here (well 60.5 at this juncture of the year), and I can identify with every struggle felt in this thread, BUT, I have finally set aside my previous racing experience and competence, and just enjoy riding practice days and don't leave the track upset one iota about a jump I probably could have done but didn't. Now it is about getting away and doing something I still really enjoy doing, that is MINE, and no one else's. Not my 4 kids (19 thru 24 so all grown but they never gravitated towards mx and to be brutally honest I never pushed it, they all did and still compete at a high level in their chosen sports), not my wife-this is the ONE thing that is mine, and I started racing in 1975 on a Suzuki TM100. I really look forward to riding and try to get out once and maybe twice a week in the short spring/summer we have. I like seeing a bunch of guys my age that still show up to practice days, we shoot the shit, and get a bunch of riding in. I'm grateful I can still do it, and do it well enough to continue to justify the expense. I still follow it daily, watch all the races, listen to podcasts, keep up with the technology and am blown away at what the top guys can do on a dirt bike. And fit it in with minimal interruption in my family life otherwise. If I could ride for the next decade I would be so bloody thrilled, but I'm on a year to year contract! But once the snow starts to melt I can't wait to go and ride my dirt bike. I just bought a 2024 KTM 300SX to go with my 2021 Husky 450, and rode both yesterday afternoon all by myself at a friends little backyard track and just had a great few hours. The 300 is amazeballs-2 stroke technology thanks to the Austrians produces easy to use power that you still have to respect, but it is just fun to ride and everyone in this thread grew up on 2 strokes. Brings back the best feeling. So my message is this-enjoy it at this station, as we are near the end of the line. It is great physical and mental exercise and each and every time you pack up and head home, you feel so much better. That is a true constant. I always have something to look forward to and I really just appreciate it. Hard to explain it to people that haven't had it as such an integral part of their lives, so I don't try.

Crashing at speed is usually worse than in the trees in my experience... Even sand gets hard at 50mph.

Reading all these comments. I haven’t raced MX in about 15 years (31 now), it was also on an ATV as well, so I am still getting the feel for two wheels. 
IIRC, remember hitting like a 90 foot uphill triple into a 360 turn on that 450r and I think about that now and I’m like what the fuggle was I thinking. 4th gear, pinned, can’t see the landing type stuff. There was a few other riders hitting it at the time and I asked one what he did and sent it like he said. My parents were pissed, they told me never hit that triple. It was scary to be honest, but I could argue getting on any machine like we do is scary. A craft that always needs to be respected. 
 

Currently , keep having dreams I’ll go like 200ft in the air off a table top and try and figure out how to land appropriately..

I wake up when I hit the ground. Fun.