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Tag: <span>skinnies</span>
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The day I rediscovered mountain biking also happened to be the day I met John Gaddo (AKA ‘El Gato’). It was the grand opening weekend of the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Trails back in June of 2011 and he was chauffeuring Hans “No way” Rey around, one of his many duties as a QBP staffer. I happened to be at a Crosby, MN pub when he and Hans came in for beers and dinner with Gary Sjoquist, Advocacy Director for QBP and Jeff Verink, sales rep with GT Bicycles. John told me he grew up in my hometown of Northfield, was into bicycle trials, and we’ve been colleagues ever since.
I have another guest blog post on Singletracks. com today:
The Jumping Dismount: 10 Drills to Make You Safer When Bailing Off High Skinnies
It’s my fifth guest post for them. The others:
- Why Lowering Your Seatpost for Skinnies and Other Technical Terrain Reduces Your Odds of Getting Injured
- How To Prepare Your Eyes to Ignore Your Survival Instincts When Riding Skinnies
- 11 Drills for Holding a Line: Gain Confidence on Skinnies and Narrow, Exposed Terrain
- Light Hands, Heavy Feet: 17 Drills to Help Make Your Riding More Stable no Matter What the Terrain
I have a guest blog post on Singletracks. com today:
It’s my fourth guest post for them. The others:
- How To Prepare Your Eyes to Ignore Your Survival Instincts When Riding Skinnies
- 11 Drills for Holding a Line: Gain Confidence on Skinnies and Narrow, Exposed Terrain
- Light Hands, Heavy Feet: 17 Drills to Help Make Your Riding More Stable no Matter What the Terrain
I have a guest blog post on Singletracks. com today:
How To Prepare Your Eyes to Ignore Your Survival Instincts When Riding Skinnies
It’s my third guest post for them. The others:
- 11 Drills for Holding a Line: Gain Confidence on Skinnies and Narrow, Exposed Terrain
- Light Hands, Heavy Feet: 17 Drills to Help Make Your Riding More Stable no Matter What the Terrain
It’s been terrific working with Editor-in-Chief Greg Heil.
I’m hoping the collaboration will continue.
I finally cleaned this log skinny both ways at Lebanon Hills Mountain Bike Trail yesterday. It turns out that the instructional series on ‘holding a line’ I’m doing for Thick Skull Mountain Bike Skills is actually benefiting the instructor. Whodathunkit?
55-second video:
I cleaned The Browner stockade skinny today at Hillside Park Mountain Bike Trail in Elk River. Toughest skinny I’ve ever ridden. Props to designer/dirt boss Rich Omdahl and the rest of the Dirt Wirx crew for building it. Rich wrote in the MORC forum:
The Browner is in its own class of evil. I’ve never even made it half way across it. I designed that thing to have 8 layers of difficulty. The first one you contend with is that I built it at the top of a climb on an uphill slope with an off camber entry. Then it gets harder.
The Browner is named after Ray Brown who was the first one to clean it (YouTube video here). I’m the second. I’m particularly pleased to accomplish this on my 65th birthday.
Here’s my one-minute video. I only show two of my dozen+ failures:
I’d never heard of the term ‘pedal ratcheting’ as a mtb skill until recently when I noticed that it’s one of the skills covered in IMBA’s ICP Level 2 course. See it demonstrated at the 1:18 mark of this video by ICP’s Lead Instructor Trainer Shaums March.
Pedal ratcheting turned out to be helpful last week in two instances. The first was when I was attempting to ride this multiple rock/elevated boardwalk skinny in the skills park at the Lebanon Hills MTB Trail system. I was on my 29’er, trying to get through in the opposite direction from normal (more difficult) without a rear wheel hop:
After a dozen tries, I finally cleaned this rock skinny yesterday at the Lebanon Hills Mountain Bike Trail skills park, riding it backwards on my 29’er, no hopping. The rear wheel just caught the edge of one of the planks.