Widely known for his passion for biking, Upper School English teacher Matthew Hoven has picked himself up and dusted himself off after a fall in September and a severe concussion earlier this year. He recently participated in the 100-mile  Almanzo 100 Gravel Bicycle race in Spring Valley, Minnesota, for the third time.

Now, shift gears to the very start of his biking career.

“I learned [how to bike] when I was five or six, my dad taught me… I learned on a hand-me-down bicycle that my brothers put together,” Hoven said. 

“Predominantly, though, years ago I moved out to Colorado, and that’s where I discovered mountain biking, and that was in 1996. … I have been riding a little bit more seriously since I moved up here, to Minnesota,” he said. 

Hoven rides a road bike, a mountain bike, and a gravel bike, the latter of which he uses to commute. 

“I like people-powered transportation, but running hurts and you’ll probably find that a lot of bikers are ex-runners or ex-hikers. I like to hike, I like to run — it just hurts too much and I can’t go as far as I can on a bike,” Hoven said. “I discovered just how freeing it is, how I can pretty much go wherever there is even the hint of a path, so there is a lot of freedom there.”

Hoven regularly tracks his training: “After my accident, my training dropped to nothing. I could feel my body aging. I felt like I aged ten years over the weekend,” he said. 

“It really struck me in terms of how fragile human beings are,” Hoven added.

“In June, I biked 88 hours.. July 67 [hours], August 60, [and in] September, when I had my accident, it dropped down to 20… October is when I really began to feel [the reduction in activity]… I could barely get out of bed. I was exhausted,” Hoven said. 

The injuries which Hoven experienced influenced more than just his bike riding. “I didn’t realize that head trauma would be so debilitating to all aspects of my life, but particularly I wasn’t aware it would require so much energy,” Hoven said. “I was fatigued all the time. It just took every ounce of energy to get up to go to work, to go home…it’s been a real slog.” 

But as his brain recovered, so did his body.  “I started building back up. I’d get out, I’d try biking again, then I’d be exhausted,” he said. 

The winter weather and healing process served as obstacles in Hoven’s riding. In January, he biked 11 hours, whereas April granted him 47 hours.

“I think once June rolls around, I’ll be back. I’ll be back to the 60, 70, [hours] or maybe more,” Hoven said. 

“So this race, for me, Race Almanzo, named after Almanzo Wilder, that was a big deal. It was kind of a milestone for me,” Hoven said. “I wanted to do better than I did the year before [and was able to].”

“The conditions were horrible–we had 30 miles per hour [wind] gusts, it was 30 degrees when we started, and they just poured fresh gravel, which is awful [to bike on]. Imagine riding a bike on two to three inches of freshly poured gravel,” he added.

“This is my third race, and I have been slowly building up fitness again and I was surprised.  I did a lot better than I expected, but I still didn’t break the top 100,” Hoven said, “I was at 111th out of a thousand.”

“There is the first wave of eight to ten riders, who are just amazing… but there is a second group that I’m going to try to catch up with next year, assuming I don’t hit my head again,” he said.