First race!

Boom!
The Fair City Enduro, this Halloween. My first ever MTB race.
May the saints preserve us...

Man down! Part 2

I just realised I kind of wandered off piste on that last post.
I started talking about mental strategies for dealing with crashes and being hurt, wandered away off on a tangent and finished off talking about mental strategies for avoiding crashes.

Crashing is always a danger, moreso the more often you ride nearer your limits. I don't agree that crashing is inevitable, nor do I agree with the "if you aren't crashing, you aren't trying" mentality. I've been through that phase in my riding and I got fed up replacing broken parts. I also realised it was just a matter of time before I didn't have a soft landing and properly injured myself.
After a particularly torrid run of crashing at least once every ride, I took a long, honest look at what I was doing and had to admit to myself I was riding way beyond what I was capable of. A hard hit for any ego to take, but better for my long term prospects as a rider.
Now, if I'm not feeling it, it isn't happening. I'm aware roughly where my limits are and how happy I am to get up to that limit. I also try to build up to things progressively.

So, dealing with the mental impact of a crash. I'm actually not sure what to do here. I think it's important to figure out how it happened, and, assuming you weren't attempting something way beyond your level, try to tackle the feature or section that you crashed on, so that it doesn't build itself in your mind into a bigger problem than it really is.
I'm guilty of this too. I can think of a couple of features locally that I have allowed to grow into big mental problems, but in reality, they are well within my abilities as they are now. Watch this space and I'll see if I can defeat these particular demons.

Man down!

Jim the Plumber had a crash on Friday night.
One of those daft ones. He wasn't pushing it, things just went a bit wrong and he fell off the Tap Drap right onto the top of his head.
Could have been nasty, but thank fuck, he was ok and rode off the hill with a sore head, sore neck and a bill for a new helmet and underpants.

Jim the Plumber versus the Tap Drap in a happier time

I think my biggest weakness is dealing mentally with being hurt.
Wee crashes are fine. Part of the game, but every now and then everyone has a bigger one that hurts, or breaks something on your bike. I'm not even talking of massive bike wreckers or bone breakers, fear of those is understandable. Smaller crashes seem to give me a glimpse behind the curtain into the land of "what if" and freak me out far more than they should.

A recent ride down at Kirroughtree was ruined for me thanks to a crash fairly early on that badly bent one of my brake levers and hurt my hand. I spent the rest of the day in pain, annoyed with myself for crashing, tense, nervous and rode like even more of a mincer than normal. It was the worst day's riding I've ever had.
In fact, I now rate Kirrie as one of my least favourite bike destinations. Unfair I know, as my bad experience was my fault, but I'm in no hurry to head back there.

In my never ending quest to improve my game, it's got me thinking about strategies for dealing with this weakness. Are there any? No idea. Do I need to MTFU? Most likely. My best bet is probably to think positive. See myself clearing tricky sections, drops, jumps, whatever. Don't focus on the negative.

I bought Mastering Mountain Bike Skills recently, and it has some interesting things to say about using verbal cues, particularly positive verbal cues. Some of the stuff from that has been a bit of a mantra for the last week, so I'll see how that goes over time.

Why We Ride

Huck it to flat H! See you very soon.

How Steep?

Steep?

It's funny how your perception of what steep actually is changes over time.
I remember a few years ago, as a MTB newb, having a Saturday afternoon solo wander around Mugdock, looking for some of the near legendary trails in the area. Following a promising looking line through some woods, I found myself at the top of the steepest, rootiest, gnarliest bit of trail I'd ever seen. I stumbled and minced down this trail, my on-bike progress being brought to a sudden end by a rooty rut and a sharp superman style dismount over the bars.
That was my introduction to Flux. One of the tastiest trails in the Mugdock area.

I associated that trail with steepness and fear, and avoided it until I started riding with a group who knew it well. Increased exposure to it reset my mental calibration of what steep is, which is something that I picked up from an article in one of the Mountain Bike mags recently.
If you think something is steep, ride it more. The more you get used to it, the more normal it becomes, so that steepness will pose less of a problem to your riding.

This was driven home recently, with The Pie and Billy Bob showing me an alternative line in Flux that I didn't even know existed. A pair of Alpine style switchbacks that turn across the steepest bit of hill I have ever pointed a bicycle down.
I'd never attempted anything like this before. Trying to go wide left me sliding sideways down the slope and, at one point, the back of the bike still lifting up, despite me having my arse in contact with the back tyre. So my first attempt didn't go well, finishing with me attempting to shuffle down the hill, while still astride my bike, because that, obviously, was far more dignified than getting off and walking the bike down...

Second attempt wasn't much better. Still affected by the residual fear and ego bruising from the first go, I tried to control my braking better, but the steepness and bad line choice still got to me, not to mention my arse being so far back, again, my back tyre started pulling my shorts down. I can't say for sure, but I may have shat myself a little bit at that point.

Last night though, something clicked. It didn't seem so steep, all of a sudden, so this left my mind a bit clearer to think about brake control, line choice and looking where I wanted to go, rather than at the terrifying steepness right under my wheels. I still didn't clear it all, but I got the first switchback fine, messed up on the roots and line for the second, but rode out the laughably steep exit. Not exactly like a boss, more like a mid level supervisor, but progress is progress.

Nowadays, that original trail that gave me the heebie jeebies doesn't seem so bad.

Not any more!

Video Catchup

Got a mixed bag of videos here.
H, Scott and I went up the OK's last Sunday afternoon. Scott's a proper jumping, hucking and dropping freeride type of guy that rides up Falkland. He was keen to see the OK's so asked if he could tag along.
This meant me and H were crapping ourselves a bit, as it's bad enough looking like a fanny, it's somehow worse looking like a fanny in front of someone who knows what they're doing.
As it turns out, it was pretty windy, so it was fine. H and Scott hit the 3rd drop down (now named Beyonce's Growler).

Scott showed us how it's done on H Bomb.

H brought his GoPro along and magicked up this.

During the week, H took Flyboy up the OK's to get him to play catchup.
Flyboy on H Bomb.

And on The Wall Jump.

Lastly, H, Pie and Nursey buggered off up to Laggan, leaving me with nothing to do but go out for a road ride.
While they were doing this shit...

...on hired bikes no less! I rode into what must have been arseholes driving to an arsehole convention up on Gleniffer Road. Or maybe it's just the sight of me in my lycra driving people insane. Who can tell.
Still, the fury kept me going for the remaining 30 hilly and windy as fuck miles.

Anyway, off work for a couple of weeks, so hoping for some biking adventures shortly.

The magic of video

I figured out how to download video off Facebook - a quite nifty wee feature in Chrome, to come over all geeky for a sec.
So, happily for him, I can post The Pie's video of him on the Sheep Drap.

So, without further ado, The Pie.

Thats the same drop that I posted earlier, just from a different point of view. We're all about production values here at Minceurs Worldwide.
Still no luck with the video of him on Fallout.

Much more importantly though, video of me on the Sheep Drap!