Intermediate course 250610

The warm and dry weather continues and it was baking hot today as I had Stephen come from the incredibly flat Lincolnshire for an intermediate course. Despite the lack of rocks and steep hills in Lincolnshire Stephen took great pleasure in tackling typical Peak District terrain and did very well too! He was like a sponge for knowledge and soaked up the theory behind each technique and was soon enough diagnosing his own performance and working on every little detail to perfect his riding. Very pleasant day indeed.

Beginners course 160610

It was an interesting day with Nick who turned out wasn't a beginner at all. He is shortly off to Canada to be in charge of mountain biking at a kids' summer camp for 10 weeks and wanted to do attend a course himself to get an idea of what to teach the kids as well as making sure he was doing things correctly. Due to the rocky terrain around here there were still a few techniques that I could pass on to him as well as lots of tips on how to deal with the kids in regards to mountain biking. Lovely day made even better by the fantastic weather!

Intermediate course 140610

Gavin came to do the course to get an insight in how to teach mountain bike skills to the kids at his school where he works as well as for personal improvement. After some superb climbing (didn't need any tuition on that front!) it was time for descending. After getting the positioning right on the bike as well as where to look etc, Kevin practised on a few different descents all with varying features and I'm safe to say he hated them all! (Great news, as I then know what we are going to spend a lot of time practising!) I repeatedly made him go down the same slope again and again, just to try and take the fear away as technically he was doing everything right, he just needed to try and relax and not tense up. Only right at the end of the morning did he slowly start enjoying things and didn't need too much persuasion to go down the biggest drop-off three times. The rest of the day went really well and by the end he got some serious speed on the downhills!

Intermediate course 120610

Ah, lovely weather again....just the kind I like! That and the easy to teach Delwyn made the one-to-one training day a wonderful day indeed! Delwyn has the unfortunate pleasure of regularly going out riding with a very skilled, completely fearless and highly experienced group of mountain bikers. Thanks to lots of training he has found it easy to keep up with them going uphills (since he has cleared Jacobs Ladder going up it I'm not surprised!!) But he found that he couldn't keep up with them as well on the downhills. We identified a couple of issues during the day and spent quite a while perfecting especially the corning technique to be able increase the speed. I was most impressed though with the beautiful rear wheel lifts on the bunny hopping section! Not bad for someone who claims never to have been able to lift his rear wheel!

Beginners course 080610

Is this the end of summer (like last year)? The dry weather is over and the rain has arrived yet again, thankfully it didn't spoil the day as despite slightly more slippery trails Angela, Sean, Lindsay and Melissa all did really well. Melissa showed the same appetite for technical riding as her mum had done previously finishing the day by going down the tricky zig-zag at a scary speed! After the course Sean continued his journey from down south up to the Lake District to try his new skills on the trails up there!