If you know me a little by now, you know how I feel about progression. If you don’t know me: I’ve been solely focused on progressing up the professional freeride mountain bike ladder for the past five years.

Even before I found freeriding and started pushing those limits, I was already hooked on the idea of constant improvement. I spent four years racing enduro but could never stick with a category long enough to take over the podium. As soon as I placed, I would move up a class just for the sake of the challenge. I love that chase. It’s exciting to push up from the back when no one expects it—here you are. Here, I am. That silly girl no one knows came and went!

But winning was never really my thing; it has always been about pushing myself to be better than before. There’s a lot to learn through the process of self-improvement. But this isn’t about those findings.

Lately, I’ve found myself in a very different mental state. The one-track-minded chase to be a better bike rider, at the cost of almost everything else, suddenly feels stale. When I look around, I don’t recognize my surroundings. I’m not so sure  I even recognize myself anymore. Did I take it too far? Did I over sauce these baked beans? In the eight years of riding my heart out professionally, I’ve been able to do so much. I’ve met some of my favorite people in the world through mountain biking, including my partner, Claire. I owe it all to this sport and to our community.

But, as I’ve grown older and wiser and stronger and like, so much prettier and also absolutely, positively poorer, I’ve realized that in order to keep progressing, sometimes we have to pause the game and check in with ourselves. I’m starting to see progression as more than just learning new tricks and finding new camera angles.

Trapping myself on a singular path and letting the pursuit of progression define me has, to be honest, cost me some of my love for the sport. Though, I’m grateful to have caught it while there’s still time to change course and preserve my affinity for the two-wheeled, knobby-laden machine we’re all obsessed with. I feel comfortable speaking for most mountain bikers when I say we all want to be able to ride for a long time. It’s taken me years to realize this: Everything we do when we’re not biking will be what preserves our love for the bike, in the long-term.