Intermediate course 090411

How could you beat beautiful blue skies, warm temperature, dusty trails, two exceptional participants and no technical hiccups? I'm not sure but I think it's going to be hard to beat Saturdays intermediate course in terms of enjoyment and pleasure! Mike and Craig had both been riding for about a year and their core skills were quite good combined with good fitness. They managed to do some nice power assisted front wheel lifts on the first climb, a technique that was new to both of them, but it was when we moved on the wheelies I realized that these two were increadibly quick to learn new things. Within 5 minutes they were both wheeliing better than me! I'm gutted! And they both swore that they had never tried wheelies before.

After lunch we started the bunny hopping practise and here again they excelled. Mike had to remove his seatpost all togheter as due to the frame design he couldn't lower the seat at all to be able to get the most out of "pumping" the bike. After doing nice front and back wheel lifts separately he had a go at combining the two into a bunny hop and couldn't quite get the timing right. I then told him not to worry as most people really need to go home and practise for at least half an hour or more to start getting the timing and body movements right to reliably do nice bunny hops. I had hardly finished talking before he suddenly set off and bounced like a rabbit on steroids over the obstacles! I'm sure he would have cleared the neighbours jack russell had it remained standing in our way for long enough! Craig also progressed nicely on the bunny hops and found that he needed to practise the "pumps" a bit more as initially he was concentrating too much on the "up" bit and not enough on the compression of the bike.

The rest of the afternoon was spent thrill seeking as we did jumps off a ledge, and some proper steep slops and drops. Right at the end we took a little detour to practise tight turns in combination with obstacles as both Mike and Craig needed to look a bit further ahead to be able to take a good line down some steep steps.

A thoroughly enjoyable day that would be hard to improve (except for possibly a strategically placed ice cream van on the route!)

Cheers Emmy; a thoroughly enjoyable day; cracking weather and expert tuition :)

I put all of the tips to good use yesterday up at Rivington Pike and rode a lot of stuff I'd have winced at before. You've given me bags of confidence!
Like I said on the day, the way in which you delivered the training was exceptional and I'll certainly be recommending you to friends and family alike.
Thanks for the pics and the great blog. And the tea and cake :)
And just out of interest, what make/size were the tyres on your bike? I may invest in a pair myself :)
Thanks once again; you're a star! Will hopefully see you sometime in May :)
Kind Regards,
Mike.