Trail Speed

I've been thinking lately about the best way to develop speed on the trail. I'm talking here about situation where speed is limited by technical skill rather than fitness. I've been comparing this situation to autocrossing, where I was in much the same situation.

As I see it, there are two options:

First, you can try to go as fast as you can and worry about the line, using terrain, smoothness, etc later. This has the advantage of probably being a little faster right off the bat, but the disadvantage that you will probably end up crashing more.

The second option is to focus on using good lines, being smooth, etc first, and hope that speed will develop. The advantage here is that you will learn good fundamentals (and probably not crash so much), but will likely be slower for longer.

In autocross, I definitely took the second option. I learned to drive clean lines and how to use vehicle dynamics to my advantage. Once I was reasonably solid in that department, I began to focus more on the sections where it just took nerve and faith in the tires to go fast. Eventually, I got to be a reasonably good driver.

Lots of other people took the opposite approach. They went out, drove as hard as they could and spun and hit lots of cones. Most of these people, if they persisted, also got to be reasonably good drivers.

So, I think riding a bike is the same. Last year, I mainly tried to go fast and was unconcerned about riding "correctly". The result was that I crashed somewhat frequently and felt bad about my technical skills most of the time. An experienced rider following me on a ride last year told me that I looked twitchy. This year, so far, I've been taking it a bit easier and focusing on riding good lines and being smooth. My suspicion is that I'm a little bit slower riding this way than I was last year, but I feel much more comfortable on the bike and with the way I'm riding. I think that ultimately, this is the right way to go for me. I am reasonably confident that my speed will develop if I stick with it.