Actually, it doesn't bother me in the slightest that I have just turned 50, because I don't FEEL 50, not that I was expecting to feel any different when the clock struck 1 minute past midnight on the 1st January 2020 but 50 is a big number and I look around at people of the same age as me and I can't relate to a lot of them... apart from those, who like me, are mountain bikers.
As I get older, I see people of my age shrivelling up and losing their zest for life, worrying about old age, worrying about their health, I don't want to end up like them! I don't want to end up with failing health and dreading retirement.
So I'm doing everything I can to keep my body and mind fit and healthy; eating well, following the Ketogenic lifestyle, being active now, and I hope all of this will pay dividends in later life.
Riding my mountain bike not only makes me feel younger, it connects me to so many amazing places and awesome people!
I'm very fortunate that my husband Leigh, even after 18 years, is my best mate, my soul mate and my riding buddy. We both started mountain biking together back in 2016 and we both agree that life revolves around our bikes, whether it's weekend rides, mid week evening rides, indoor Zwift sessions together or 2 week holidays mountain biking around North Wales.
So, when it came to my big birthday, I was chuffed to bits when he handed me an envelope which contained a gift voucher for an MTB Skills session with Performance MTB which is run by our friend Andy Hampshire...
Originally the idea was for me to have a full skills day with Andy on my own where I could improve on areas such as cornering and braking, learn new things such as manuals, bunny hops and even wheelies, things I felt I need for when I race Enduro this year... as I thought about it, I decided that actually the day would be more fun and beneficial if Leigh did it too as he's also racing this year, so I booked us in together.
A few days before, Andy emailed us both and asked us to complete a Rider's profile, this would give him an in-depth breakdown of our experience on the bike in various areas, where we had ridden, the kind of terrain we liked to ride, what we hoped to gain from the skills course and finally there was a section where we had to rate our ability levels between 1-10 (with 1 beginner and 10 pro) on things such as cornering, riding position, technical descents, technical climbing etc.
I found this quite hard as I didn't want to overrate myself and come across as cocky so I played safe and gave myself a 7 for most things except technical climbs which I scored a 4 as I'm rubbish at them and 5 for technical descents and terrain! I never thought any more of the scores until after our weekend and I'll talk about this more in the second instalment of this blog.
Andy would use this information to tailor the 2 days to both our needs, even though we had different end goals in some areas, there were lots of areas we both needed to work on.
Day 1
We agreed to meet Andy at Sherwood Pines at 9.30am, we found him in the large open green near the visitor centre, with various contraptions including an array of coloured plastic cones, a small sender ramp, and a skinny (a long thin wooden board for riding along) and various bits of tree.
The morning started with the basics; cornerning and braking, well we all know how to do that, don't we? Well, yes but not as well as we could it seems! I've always favoured 'feathering' my brakes, and tend to use my back more than my front, great for skidding to a stop but actually not great for safely stopping! So I spent some time trying to tell my silly little brain that the back is for scrubbing off speed and the front is for stopping... I got it eventually!
Then we practised cornering... now I think it's fair to say that everyone has their favourite corner, mine happens to be left, Andy explained about body position, dropping the elbow and leaning the bike and having faith in the tyres gripping and it wasn't long before I was cornering between Andy's yellow plastic cones like a pro!
Then it was time to practice turning right. Now I have a slight issue with turning into right corners, as I am almost blind in my right eye, so turning my head and looking past the exit on the corner means I almost have to do an Exorcist style rotation of my head but without the projectile vomiting! 😂
I managed to run over Andy's lovely plastic yellow cones on a number of occassions but after some practice I was improving and to be fair, riding a 'corner' made out of cones on a flat surface is harder than riding a real built up right hand berm.
Once Leigh and I had got the hang of the corners, we moved onto the 'Skinny' - a long length of thin wood, about 4" in diameter, mounted on blocks to elevate it off the ground slightly, it had a little ramp on both ends and the idea was to ride onto it and along the length and off the other end... sounds simple doesn't it!
My silly little brain (again) was telling me it's a foot off the ground and if you fall off, it's gonna hurt! What a twat!
Andy gave us some tips on how to mount it... take a run up and line the bike up, don't look at the Skinny, look past it, focus on something on the other side, which happened to be a football goal in the distance.
First attempt I looked straight at it, got the front wheel on and the back end didn't come close! So I rode round again for a second go, "Don't look at it, focus on the goal net" shouted Andy... I tried to look ahead and I managed to get both wheels on this time and then fell off just before the end!
Third time I managed to ride the whole thing, then with my confidence up I managed a few more runs successfully riding the entire length 😁
Next on the agenda was track standing, being able to balance the bike whilst standing on the pedals, a very handy trick if you ride up to an obstacle and want to check it out (and impress your mates) before deciding whether to ride over it by either popping the front wheel or bunny hopping it. Despite my best efforts I couldn't manage more than a couple of seconds so I will be practicing this whenever I can!
We then moved onto bunny hopping, something I need to learn to be able to ride over obstacles not only when I'm racing but when out on the bike in general. I've got a lot better riding over things like fallen trees, logs etc but if its more than 4" high I'll walk over it. Andy got his bits of tree out, one being a thick log which he staked to the ground, the other being a long thin branch and he asked us both to show him how we would tackle those obstacles... I just rode over them, my pathetic attempt at popping the front wheel was duly noted! 😂
Andy explained the process of 'popping' the front wheel, Leigh excelled at this and I was rubbish BUT we did discover that I can get the back wheel off the floor with no problems but the front wheel just wasn't having it, Leigh joked it must be because of my little T-rex arms 🤨
Next was the Sender Ramp, I'd been looking forward to playing on this all morning, I love doing jumps, not big mahoosive jumps, but little pop offs, drops etc, anything to get 2 wheels off the floor! Once again Andy explained about correct body position and how to launch and land correctly and that speed/momentum is your friend...
I was good at this, and happily rode round and round riding over it again and again, much to the amusement of Leigh and Andy who both have this impression that I'm a bit of a hooligan... don't know why? 🤣
During the summer months when it's light in the evening, Darren from the shop, runs a fortnightly mid week TT race. It's a great little course with some pretty gnarly off piste singletrack including a section infamously known as 'Carnage Corner'... aptly named because it's a tight off camber 180 degree corner where you exit up a rooty little climb.
Leigh and I had tried to ride this right hand corner many times in the past and for one reason or another never managed to get round, and always ended up jumping off the bike and pushing up... well Andy was having none of that!
After looking at the line and reminding ourselves of the cornering we had practiced that morning, it was time to give it a go. Of course being a right hand corner, I had to practice my Exorcist head rotating again, I failed at the first attempt but second time round BINGO! and then there was no stopping me, round and round I went like a kid who has just learnt to ride a bike without stabilisers! I was so happy I asked Andy to film me and I did 2 laps just to prove it wasn't a fluke first time 😁
Now it was time to try the quarter stroke/pedal technique, another tool when you have to get over an obstacle on the trail, it's basically a track stand into a front wheel 'pop' and it's used to start a wheelie. Once again Leigh got it straight away but I couldn't do it, I just couldn't slow the bike down enough to get that pedal stroke, only managing it when Andy held the bike for me. I clearly have some stuff to practice over the coming weeks!
It was getting late in the afternoon and gone 3pm, so we decided to wrap the day up by sessioning one of the Downhill runs over at the Jump Park, now Pines isn't known for it's gnarly steep descents so these are more gravity runs but you can pick up some decent speed from the top and if you get it right you can clear the rock obstacles and drop offs.
So we had a play, running backwards and forwards putting into practice all we had learnt that day. It was good fun and as usual my inner hooligan made an appearance much to the amusement of everyone (I can't help it, sorry!).
It was interesting watching other people come down these trails too and see how 'not' to ride them!
After a final full run, we headed back to the visitor centre, all smiles and heads full of skills, ready to take on Day 2 at Lady Cannings, the following day 😊
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