cathy push
Having chatted to jedi (ukbikeskills) on twitter on Friday night he promised he had done a deal with the big man (or woman) for sunshine on our skills course.
Unfortunately it seems the person upstairs had got their times wrong.
The first sign of how wet and slippy it was going to be was when I tried to park the car and it slid a couple of feet down the hill kindly shutting the door on Ali’s car on the way down.
The first thing we did was look at some body positioning and getting the bikes set up right. This was really useful to think about how bike controls are set-up but no amount of fettling could get my pesky 9 gears to work – time for new drivetrain bits I think.
A couple of skills tests were carried out before moving on to the drops.
Ali on drop
Demonstration of the drops technique showed how little effort is needed to do drops correctly – a bit of time was spent ”sessioning” this and moving on to the larger drops.
The main thing I came away with is not t over-push and the amount of push needed is dependant on speed and not size of drop. A simple but incredibly useful tip that needs to stick in my head when out riding.
After a break for hot coffee and clean gloves we moved on the trail.
This involved bermed and flat corners and broken down in to sections. Working on separate sections over and over again really helped to embed technique and increase flow.
The middle section of the trail included a small jump which after a few runs a small amount of controlled air was achieved.
ian air(ish)
Moving on to the bottom section of the trail meant combining the drop technique and looking before hitting a pretty fast (if ridden well) final corner. We have a few runs at this before hitting the whole trail to put stuff together.
The biggest compliment I can pay for the day is that all 4 of us got a lot out of it in spite of less than ideal conditions. After around 5 hours the session was knocked on the head as we were getting tired (and cold).
Day was rounded off by lovely carrot cake and a tour of the impressive herts shore, below is the reflections video Tony was talking about.
Excellent course and would definitely recommend ukbikeskills to others.
Take a look at the full set of skills day course photos
