Monday 21 February 2011

Intermediate course 200211

Adrian, Sam and Nick, all fairly local and familiar with the area, came to progress their riding further, both in learning new skills and also increase their confidence on technical terrain.

Both Adrian and Sam had ridden for many years and their core skills were very already very good, which showed when we did technical climbing and descending rocky loose slopes. After doing wheelies, track standing and cornering we moved on to bunny hops in the afternoon.

Neither had done bunny hopping before and in a remarkably short time Adrian was able to jump nearly a foot high in true beautiful bunny hop style using flat pedals. Sam, who uses SPDs, did well in resisting the temptation of doing speed hops and was able to brake the movement up and lift the wheels separately of the ground despite an initial aversion to lifting the front wheel of the ground.  Nick with many years experience of road cycling also did very well with the bunny hops.

After the bunny hoping we moved on to doing some jumps and judging by the smiles and how many goes they all had (apart from Nick whose brake levers sadly snapped after just two jumps when sliding into the bank and not being able to release his foot from the SPD in time) I got the feeling they liked being in the air!




To finish the day we rode a big drop off to further build their confidence up and slid through the mud down to the bottom of the valley as a nice end to the day.

 

No comments: