If you’re like me, you’re deeply captivated by mountain biking. Joking with friends, in a cheeky and biased way, I routinely assert that mountain biking is “the best sport.” But it can be hard to know what draws us so intensely to this curious activity.

We know mountain biking enriches life, but for what reason do we, ride after ride, continue to come back and pedal our faithful machines? A deeper truth about our sport is fundamental to understanding what makes many of us tick—the process of overcoming.

This basic principle came to me recently after a rigorous session of pushing myself past my limits. Following an episode of flirting with the bounds of my courage, calculating, over-thinking and assessing risks— “What are the odds I’ll snap a bone and be out of work for months?”—I finally built up the nerve to try some new things. And, as is often par for the course, I crashed.

Mountain bikers, over time, develop cat-like reflexes through being hurled through the air repeatedly. During our first few bad crashes we are like deer in headlights. Instead of fight or flight, we freeze—the absolute worst thing to do when things go wrong. This is one lesson that must be learned the hard way, but after many wrecks we develop new neurological structures adept at navigating the uncertainty of careening off rocks and roots and plunging our bodies and bikes down steep inclines. Like cats, we sense, often in midair, that something is not right. We enter a rapid critical-thinking process, determining our trajectory within fractions of a second before deciding to abort or stick with a given move. Sometimes we nail the landing. In other instances, we pounce to the ground and commando-roll in a cloud of dust, emerging with dirt-stained skin and grime-filled wounds to lick.