Weekend Update

No posting for a while is sometimes a good sign. In this case, it means I've been busy after work, being more-or-less productive on the bike and doing other things.

I went for a pretty easy road ride on Thursday night, and then came home and worked on cyclocross skills in my backyard for a while. I didn't fix my hopping problem.

Friday night, I ended up doing a hard ride on the trainer. I mowed the lawn first, so I didn't have enough daylight left to do the ride outside. I was feeling quite a bit better on Friday, but I still had a little touch of a cold.

I went to the Flying Rhino cyclocross clinic on Saturday. They split it up into two parts, one on cornering and one on mounts/dismounts. The cornering section was interesting, but I was very inconsistent. When I relaxed, leaned the bike, and looked where I wanted to go, I could maintain a pretty good speed through the corners. When I wasn't confident enough to lean the bike, my cornering was much uglier (pretty much the same issue I have on the mountain bike).

The second part was on dismounts and mounts. I think there was a little instructional issue here, since our instructors were telling us something slightly different than they seemed to be actually doing. The dismount instruction went like this:

1. Unclip right foot
2. Swing right leg behind saddle
3. At the same time as (2), bring the right hand to the top tube
4. Step through (or behind) with the right leg)
5. Clip out left foot

My issue was with step 3. If you bring your right hand to the top tube at the same time your right leg is coming around, you've got (in my opinion) too much momentum moving left and it's very difficult to stay balanced. When the instructors actually demonstrated (at full speed; they could do what they described going slowly), they actually reversed steps 3 and 4, which makes much more sense to me. I've checked a few other sources, and this seems to be the more consistent method.

The thing that I did get out of this was that it is important to put your hand on the top tube before dismounting. Not only does this get you ready to carry the bike, but, more importantly, it takes weight off of your left foot, making it easier to clip out.

We also worked on mounting; the instructors verified, that yes, I do hop. Two things I picked up here: the first was to try to lean the bike toward you as you remount. The second was to run with the bike on the ground for a couple steps with your hand on the top tube to help stabilize it.

After the skill parts, we rode a couple laps of the course they set up. I rode my laps fairly hard, but most others didn't. After that, we called it a day. I was glad I went hard for a few laps, but I was also glad it was just a few laps, since I still wasn't feeling 100% after my cold.

For Sunday, I decided that if I was really feeling good in the morning, I'd go ride, otherwise, I'd just relax until hockey. My nose was still running a bit in the morning, so I skipped my ride. Hockey went OK. Even though I scored a couple goals, I felt like I actually played better last week. One odd thing I noticed: going over the boards (going off the ice) has very similar mechanics to jumping on your bike. It's just that the boards are much longer, and don't move... One thing is for sure, I'm much less tired today after only playing hockey yesterday than I was last week when I raced and played hockey.