The promised video

As promised yesterday, here is the video of my new hucking powers. It isn't very big, but with the addition of an appropriate soundtrack it is very amusing. Well to me anyway.




In further news I went shuttling for the first time this year yesterday and it was good. When a friend says you have to come shuttling with her because she's just got a new bike and it's the hottest thing around roadie training gets thrown out the window. Shuttling was brilliant and while I was really nervous on the first run I was fully grinning at the bottom. The second run was even better and we rode a track I've never ridden before called Cool Runnings. I can't wait to do more shuttles, once I've finished all this training for the Molesworth.

Skillz – Shuttles Rock

Shuttles up Vic Park again last night with scatter. (I really should get a photo of me in my fullface and pads for here). I haven’t been on the bike since the Hammerhead, but it has a new derailleur hanger since my crashes at the weekend and I put its big fat tyres on. We managed to make the 4:40pm shuttle this time and headed down Brake-Free, Seasame St, Dazzas, Brents, Bridges and out. As scatter is faster than me I picked my own lines through Brents and ended up riding the 3 drops (no worries) in the top half at low speed. Yay. On Bridges however I took the wrong line and ended up at the top looking down a wall of death. After a brief wave to scatter in the distance I daintily walked down, which was bloody difficult. We missed out on getting on the next shuttle but scored a ride with some nice boys back to the top. This time no mucking about, straight down Seasame St (not the best lines from me this time), Dazzas (nice flow), Brents (nana lines all the way), Bridges (ahhhh, you turn right there) and then I rode Double Drop for the first time (couldn’t be bothered getting off and pushing my bike down). WOW! That was scary but soooooooooooo fun. Blast down the 4wd track doing hucks and catch the next shuttle.
Back up the top and nice to get into the fresh air (it was a bit stinky in the bus on this run) and we decided to session Brake Free and practise our jumping skills. Wee, fun, but really tiring. Scatter showed me how to do the first double and I got it. Yeah!!! I also managed to hit a couple of the big tabletop jumps perfectly. Yes, yes, yes. It was actually bloody hard work just doing laps of this small track but I really felt like I was making huge progress, thanks scatter.
Then it was time to head down. I nailed Seasame St this time and managed to keep up with scatter most of the way down, a first. Then Dazzas (fast, fast, fast) and into Brents (nana lines again, silly I’m definitely riding the top drops next time) and Bridges. I knew the lines this time and then Double Drop, where I nearly had a whoopsie, but my new found skills saved me.
It was definitely the best ride I’ve had, which is saying something because I’ve been loving being on the bike at the moment. I feel like my skills, well my downhill skillz, are better than they’ve ever been and I just need to work on my fitness to get my up and across skills up there as well. I would highly recommend shuttling to anyone who wants to get a bit more confidence into their descending. Riding the same bits of track over and over in a short space of time without the oxygen debt of climbing really gives you a great sense of how the bike moves, what lines to hit and how fast (or much faster) you can go.

I guess its back to the hills for me. I should also try and find the motivation to do more roadie work, but my bouncy bike is just so much more fun. I think shuttling will definitely have to be a semi-regular thing though, its just so good.

Dangerously Addictive

When I first started mountain biking I honestly thought I would never ever want to ride Downhill, down hills was fine, but Downhill is insane. Recently I’ve been rethinking that a wee bit and after going and watching a DH race on Sunday I thought I’d like to at least try and ride the tracks they were using in the race. My how things change.
Three of us headed to Vic Park after work yesterday to suss out some easy and slightly more difficult tracks for a prospective women’s only event next year. Southstar are running a shuttle service in Vic Park now so that made organising our little expedition much easier. Michelle and Liv were both keen and both much, much more experienced than me (Michelle used to race downhill and Liv still does at elite level), so I knew I was in good hands.
Oh. My. God. It was sooooo much fun. We started off on the new track Seasame Street. It is so sweet, beautiful bermed corners, crazy gap jumps and step downs for the talented on big bikes, nana lines for the less brave, wee jumps and big jumps and just a whole lot of fast fun. Then onto Dazzas, again lovely berms, but with some roots and rocks and interesting lines. From there we did Brents which was a bit trickier, more drop offs, big roots and gnarly corners, but I managed to ride most of it and then on down the 4wd track grinning and doing wee hucks over the speed bumps. We just missed the next shuttle pick up so there was some sitting round, talking bikes and shite and generally chilling. Next run started in Brake Free, lots of table tops for practising jumping and berms, then Seasame Street again (how could we not), Dazzas again, then a line I think is called Ponos (please correct me if I’m wrong) that was pretty rocky with some exciting blind corners that I walked and some steep sections, then a bit I don’t know the name of, but I’ve ridden it a few times through some rooty stuff and then back down the 4wd track.
I think we’re getting a fairly good idea of some tracks to put together, but we’ve decided that Wednesday night shuttles should be a regular occurrence so we’ll have another run next week and get a better idea. I might also go for a walk through the park with my camera at the weekend and take some pics of the various tracks.
The 2 runs were so much fun and I rode things I never thought I would, let alone find them to be relatively easy. I can’t wait to go back and do some more, but I think I need to sort myself out with some googles because the dust was horrid. Some proper downhill shorts would also be good so I might have to pay a wee visit to Grind as they have a great range of women’s clothes.