To do well at a downhill race, it requires a lot of things. The one I have been thinking about and one I think I really improved upon recently is the strategy in which I approach practice.

I realized in Sun Peaks, the longest track of the year, that I needed to do something different from most other tracks. Usually I broke the tracks down into 2 or 3 different sections and worked on them all on the same run, stopping and pushing back up on bits that I was struggling with. In Sun Peaks, because of the length and roughness of the course, I broke it down into more smaller sections, and only focused on 1 or 2 each run and just cruised through the ones I wasn’t focusing on that particular lap. On the way up the chairlift, I planned out which sections I would focus on and either talk to myself like a crazy person on what I would do, or make my brother listen to my rambling when he rode up the chair with me.

The result was I took much fewer laps that I usually would have, which saved energy, and was still able to put everything together into one run. The whole weekend I was riding I did only 3 full laps without stopping. One practice lap, one seeding run, and obviously my race run. This was extremely helpful especially on such a long course because I actually had a lot of energy on race day and was able to sprint where others were sitting down and resting their legs.

In the end, unfortunately I had a crash in my race run. My front wheel went over a blown out berm and I had to get myself back up to speed on one of the only flat/uphill sections of the course. I did loose a bit of time, but still managed to get 10th, beating a few people who usually are more than 5 seconds faster than me.

Even though I crashed, I still consider it my best race weekend yet. I look forward to using this strategy on the rest of the races this year!

Over this past weekend, I took a PMBI Level 1 Mountain Biking Instructor Course at Endless Biking in North Vancouver. As mentioned in a previous post, I will be helping Cory of C4 Rider Training out with some younger riders to help develop their skills so if they are interested, they will be ready to race when they are old enough.

Endless biking does more than instructing the PMBI Course. They rent and tour people around showing them the local trails and provide instruction and lessons for beginners and advanced riders as well!

The course was over three days and we did a lot of our learning on Fromme or over by the Richard Jurn trail. It was very cool to see a lot of different riders from all over the lower mainland come and learn new skills and be taught how to effectively teach them. The weather worked with us for two days, but on Sunday it poured pretty much the whole time we were outside! Even though I was there to learn how to teach skills, I also learned new skills that I will be using in my riding. Primarily climbing positions. I wasn’t raised on the North Shore, so I’m constantly being passed on the technical climbs by these local mountain goats on two wheels. Hopefully a lot less now that I know some tips to help keep my front wheel on the ground!

The “Party Bus” Can take 18 people and 12 bikes to the trailhead!

The instructor for the course, Darren Butler is a very knowledgeable and skilled rider. I’ve taken a lot of instructor courses for swimming, and this was a totally different environment. All the feedback he gave everybody was positive and encouraging and really made me less nervous and be able to do what I knew I could do. Because of this experience, I am feeling much more confident going into my swimming instructor evaluation later on this week!

The Level 2 course will be offered in the end of May probably in the Whistler Bike park, so I’ll have to wait a while to complete my level 2 training.

An amazing week at Crankworx came to an end on the final day when I was practicing for the Canadian Open DH. On my first practice run of race day, I had a brake issue and ended up crashing. It wasn’t that bad of a crash, but I landed hard on my hip and on my head, causing another concussion. I rolled back into the tent wondering weather I should race or not. After a while of walking around and talking about it, I decided it wouldn’t be a good idea. Landing on my hip in the way that I did, made it really hard to put pressure on the pedals, which is a necessity on this course because it’s so technical.

After last year, I was really hoping I could avoid a concussion this race season. It took me out for quite a while last year, and this year was no different. Fortunately it was close to the end of the season this year. I wasn’t able to race in the Canadian Open, or the BC Cup final in Fernie, which is sad because they are the two best courses of the season!

Even though I wasn’t able to race the final race at Crankworx, I’m still glad I got to celebrate all the festivities of Crankworx with everybody else and ride (in my opinion) the best race track in BC! Hopefully things will go better for me next year at that race. I’m already looking forward to it.

A couple of my favorite things: By bike, and the view from the top of Garbonzo

Last weekend was the first real DH race of the season. We packed up on Friday and headed south to Port Angeles Washington for a combined Northwest and BC Cup race. The shuttle system was pretty interesting. They stuffed us in big U-Haul trucks and drove (more like bounced) us up the mountain. It was quite the experience. Plus I was riding and still tuning my new bike that I had only ridden once the night before and had crashed. The morning didn’t feel the greatest as I was still messing with suspension settings, but towards the end of practice I was dialing it in. The last couple of runs I started trying to push the bike, which wasn’t really ideal since we only had 4 hours to practice. We got in 6 or 7 practice runs, just enough to know the course. I wasn’t feeling that confident, but I knew that there was nothing I could do, so my goals were just to get down the mountain as smoothly and quickly I could while being cautious enough so that if the bike decided to do something strange, I would be able to compensate for it. I ended up getting the race run I was comfortable with and only made one small mistake in a corner. I was 12th out of 45 and only 7 seconds back from 1rst place. 7 seconds may seem like a lot, but I can think of a lot of places on that course that I could make up that time. Lesson learned? Go up a day early so I can get more practice runs and don’t build a bike and expect myself to be used to it after one run.