Mountain Bike Clinic

About a week ago I participated in a mountain bike clinic that the race team was putting on. Lee McCormack worked with us for 6 hours to get everyone dialed in and ready for the season. He did a fantastic job! Lee wrote the book on Mastering Mountain Bike Skills. No really, he wrote the book! The guy obviously has amazing bike handling skills but more than that, he knows how to share them with everyone else. He systematically took a group of racers and gave us new skills. Just step by step by step and boom, everyone got it.

We all had a great time and I would highly recommend you or your group take a look at Lee's clinics. They are well worth it! The weather we had for the day wasn't great but everyone had a great time and learned something new. I'm looking forward to getting out on the trail and practicing my new skills! I'm also hoping the team can get him back for the next level clinic.

We were out at the Golden Bike Park for the clinic. It was an outstanding location for the group because we could all work on our skills and Lee could easily see everything and give us pointers. Unfortunately the pump track was a series of lakes, designed without drainage.. really? Anyway, it was a fantastic event.

Trying to stay warm and absorb the knowledge.

Lee systematically stepping us through the process. Our happy little group, ready to hit the dirt.

The weather was moving in near the end of the day but the group was motivated and having fun.

U2 360 Tour!

Think About It!

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Where has the time gone?

Wow, it’s been a long time. I haven’t forgotten you all, I just haven’t had time. Changes at work have caused a lot of extra stress and required more of my time. To keep the family and fitness part of my life in balance I’ve had to eliminate the extras. Sorry.

This past weekend I raced the Front Range 60, a 60 mile marathon mountain bike race here in town. A 10 mile loop raced 6 times. This would be the longest mountain bike race I’ve ever done and the longest single ride time I’ve spent in the saddle in the past couple of years, certainly the longest race.

My plan was… well, I didn’t really have a good plan. Having not race something like this before I had no idea what to expect from my body. I ended up felling pretty good that morning so I just let myself ride. I’m sure I was a little too fast the first few laps but I knew everyone would get tired as the race went on so if I could get in some time early, we’d just see how the last laps went. Maybe I could sustain those gains if I didn’t fade too bad.

The course was basically two parts, the eastern part that had two climbs of decent size followed by the western side with relatively flat fun little sweeping sections along a river. The wind was minimal and helped keep the dust away. The sun and temperature, for the first time this year, had us racing without extra layers. Nothing on the trail was overly technical making it fast. I ran my Kenda small block eight tires with about 30 psi pressure, making them pretty hard to minimize rolling resistance. The Cannondale Flash 29er was perfect for this loop. It was fast and the fork soaked up everything. I had no mechanical issues during the entire race.

In the end, I feel like I did well. I had a mid pack finish which wasn’t bad considering there are no categories other than age and I recognized some of the names of racers from faster categories in front of me. Where I feel I did well was with racers that are traditionally a little faster. Last year some of these racers put ten minutes on me in shorter races. I was expecting that they could put big time on me in this long race. This time however I was putting 5 to 10 minutes on them. Regardless, it was fun and I’ve been recovering this week. I'm just not starting to look forward to the next race.

I'll try to keep the blog updated a little more frequently.