MOUNTAIN BIKE LESSONS

THINKING ABOUT THE RACE

A very good day of racing the MTBs in Cedar Rapids at Beverly Park.  It was an outstanding event, but let me tell you it was HOT and humid.  Very good to be in the shade of the woods.  Hot enough that Kat Porter ran out of fuel and did the last lap of the race in total body cramps.  In spite of the heat we had Karmen Wobler, Joe Zinga, Chris Ridder and Eric Weir, and another fellow from the Cedar Valley tearing up the excellent dirt course.  Hot enough that I didn’t think twice about racing the expert event – the three laps of the Sport Cat were enough for me.

It is always good to take something useful away from one of these races.  Today, I was really concentrating on some of the technical things that I’ve been working on for the last few weeks - cornering  – pedaling into/through the corners, keeping my weight back, loading up the outside pedal, and sort of leading into corners with my head – and the body well follow.  I think I’ve made some progress.  Our course today was similar to much of what we ride around here so it was a time to put these techniques into practice.  I really have progress, but our first lap had me riding like I’ve never taken a bike off road.  I came to a dead stop 5 times – two of which I crashed to the ground and the other three times  I was left standing watching the competition ride away.  The lesson for the day.  On a new course you need to preride the course and to do it a race pace.  During our preride we were just warming up our legs and kind of learning the course.  It was so hot that I kept us riding easy.  So, I need to preride faster and learn about the corners, hills, rocks, sand, trees … near race pace.

The second two laps were fine.