Practise practise practise

The third round of the PNP MTB Series is exactly one week away, so for me, the past couple of weeks have all been about practise (with more practise!). Since the last PNP race 2 weekends ago, I've been up on Mt Victoria riding the course every second day or so. In the first week, I was up there four out of 7 days. This past week I've only been up there three times.. and there's still another week to go!

I don't often get to head out to Mt Vic, although it is really quite ideal because it's not too far from work. The riding up Mt Vic is a bit different to my local (Makara Peak) trails - think steeper, rootier, with pine trees and pine needles and pine cones. I figure the only way I'm going to get comfortable riding up there is to do it often!

The first couple of rides were to familiarise myself with the course - there's a few tricky technical sections. Most of them were part of the National XC Champs course (which I raced at the beginning of the year), so it was just a matter of remembering where my lines went for those sections. A new bit of the course had me stumped for the past few weeks - a wide open "ski slope" section that I just couldn't get my head around! Last Sunday, I led a Womens (and U15 boys?!) pre-ride of the course, and that was good fun. 15 women came out to give the course a go, and it was great watching them riding the various tricky sections after a few attempts :) Hope to see them back for the race next weekend!

Today was another group pre-ride of the course. A different group of riders, and a slightly faster pace than last week's pre-ride. I tail-end charlied (although still managed to lose a few people early on! Ooops..they found us eventually!), and it was good watching people ride that rascally ski slope section. Marco (the race organiser) had done a slight modification of a section of the ski slope so it was a bit easier to roll down. And hurrah! I made it down it finally! :) After two weeks of staring at the section and wondering if I'd be able to ride it, it feels good to actually do it! :)

So things were going pretty well after that section! Until I managed to mess up an uphill section (go figure) where you have to approach it with speed to get up the side. A slippery patch at the bottom sent me off my usual line and straight up into a tree root before I could even think to turn the handlebars! The bike bounced backwards while I went over the handlebars and landed on my knees (my poor knees! They're rather battered after last season.. but that can be another blog post!) and onto my front. Ouch. No blood and no damage however. Although I imagine it would've been quite a fun crash to watch! ;)

So yup. This week's going to be more practise, practise, practise! I used to do gymnastics as a kid and I remember my coach reiterating that it wasn't "practise makes perfect", but "perfect practise makes perfect". I'm not quite sure how that applies to mountainbiking. I, for one, do not think that my lines and technical skills are perfect (far from it!), but hey, they're things I can work on and only hope to improve over time. And if it means more time on the bike to work on these skills, then that's pretty damn cool.