Richard had done a lot of cycling both road and mountain biking but not really spent time thinking about skills and technique. He had been given the course as a present from his wife and it was the ideal opportunity for him to both learn new things as well as getting an overview of his existing skills. His trial and error approach had taken him quite far as demonstrated by being excellent at track standing although he needed more encouragement to move about more on the bike, something that was made a little harder by the fact that he couldn't lower his seat post very much. The intermediate course is very much centered around "pumping" the bike to make it come off the ground for various applications and a few times he borrowed my bike to just to see how much easier it was once the seat post was out of the way. It convinced him that he needed to cut his own down a bit, something he had been meaning to do for a long time.
Once jumping and bunny hopping was out of the way we spent time working on tight and technical corners to demonstrate the importance of where you are looking as well as staying balanced on the bike. We also did a some rocky and technical climbing something Richard was already very good at due to excellent power to weight ratio, all that was needed was to encourage him to lean more forward and tuck in his elbows as the ground became more rocky and he flew up the technical climb with out a single dab.
The day was very gloomy and dark but thankfully the rain held off and the temperature was a balmy 13 degrees so can't complain about that, especially considering the horrendous floods and awful winds that were to come for the weekend!
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