Ride the heavy.
The mission.
Ride The Heavy is a first-person account of carrying the heavy and riding anyway.
The heavy is the weight you don’t talk about. Anxiety. Depression. A mind that keeps you up at 2am and keeps you from getting anything done at 2pm. Injuries that take longer to heal than they used to. The loneliness that creeps in as you get older and nobody warns you about. Mine’s quieter than it was a few years ago, mostly because of the guys I ride with now.
I’ve had a heart attack and a triple bypass. Mountain biking, staying in motion, and music haven’t fixed any of that BUT they’ve kept me moving through it, and that’s enough to build on.
I share my journey so you know you’re not alone in yours.
How I got here.
In 2017, I traded the suffocating congestion of the 405 for the heat of Phoenix. It was a calculated move—escaping the chaos of California for a shot at peace. Back then, the kids were young enough to be dragged onto the trail. My wife was a regular on the weekend excursions. We were a unit.
Then time did what it always does: it moved on.
The kids aged out. My wife retreated from the 115-degree summers. Working from home turned into a cage of isolation. My support system didn’t just break; it eroded. I was about to hit 50, alone in a home office, and starting to feel the heavy weight of a world that didn’t seem to have a place for me.
I had a choice: fade out or build something.
I took a dead Facebook group of 27 people and started burning money on ads. I showed up to trailheads at 5:00 AM, waiting for strangers. Most Saturdays, I was standing there alone or with one other guy. But I kept showing up. By the summer of 2023, I had a tribe. Five guys. A regular rotation. I remembered what it felt like to belong to something that didn’t require a paycheck or a chore list.
Then came March 2024.
I led a group ride at Apache Wash. Somewhere between the trailhead and the finish, my heart decided it had enough. St. Patrick’s Day was spent in the ER. Five days later, they cut my ribs open for a triple bypass.
Recovery is a fucking masterclass in patience. At 12 weeks, I was on the gravel bike. At 16 weeks, I was back on the dirt. But the ego took the biggest hit. I went from leading the pack to bringing up the rear, watching my friends disappear over the ridgeline.
I had to kill the version of myself that chased PRs. I learned to love the simple mechanics of the pedal stroke. I realized I didn’t miss the races—I missed the camaraderie. I stopped focusing on what I lost and started obsessing over the fact that I get to ride.
Talking to the riders in my group, I realized I wasn’t the only one “riding heavy.” Every person on that trail is carrying some kind of shit—divorce, health scares, career burnout, loneliness, or just the quiet desperation of getting older. We aren’t just mountain biking, we’re practicing a form of aggressive meditation. The trail is the only place the world goes quiet.
Ride The Heavy was born from that dirt. It’s a place to unload the weight, find the grit to keep pedaling, and remind yourself that the trail doesn’t care about your bypass scars. It only cares that you showed up.
January 2026. We’re just getting started.