I took the MORC Mountain Bike Skills Clinic from Jed Olson and Chance Glasford last week at the Carver Lake Park MTB Trail. (See my album of 30+ photos.)
They started the clinic by asking everyone to state what they hoped to gain from it. I said that I wanted a refresher on the basics. I didn’t really expect to learn anything new.
But I did.
1. The day after the clinic I rode the intermediate loop at Elm Creek. It was much more fun (I could go a lot faster) due to my more consistent use of A) the attack position; and B) proper cornering technique, especially looking ahead in the turn while rotating my hips. I’d gotten lazy and developed bad habits without realizing it. Watching Chance demonstrate this several ways and then doing those drills at the clinic on a flat grassy field immediately carried over to my riding.
2. The individual coaching I got from Jed on doing a bunny hop resolved a dilemma that I blogged about recently: Why am I able to able to ride over a big rock (lifting the front wheel with a manual, then unweighting) yet I’m not able to bunny hop over a small object like a pop can?
My interpretation of Jed’s answer: when my unweighted rear wheel strikes the rock (or if I hit it with my chain ring bash guard), the impact forces the front wheel down. My unweighting still gets me over it.
But since one purpose of a bunny hop is to clear an object without touching it, I need to push the front wheel down with the handlebars after the peak of the manual, while simultaneously unweighting or even ‘scooping’ the rear wheel. That pushing motion is important. Jed demoed it several times (alas, no photo) and it’s imprinted in my brain. Now I’ve got to go out and do it.
Those two items alone were worth the cost of the clinic for me.
It was great to see the strong turnout for the clinic (19 paid registrations, maximum 20). I hope MORC keeps offering these, maybe offering short clinics devoted to a single skill/technique, eg, a two-hour clinic on jumping table tops, a two-hour clinic on pumping, etc.