Rubber Side Down

Well, since my last post, I've managed to keep the rubber side down on my rides. I didn't get in as much riding over the weekend as I'd hoped, but I am pretty much recovered from my crashes. My legs and arms are still scabbed and bruised, but I'm not sore anywhere anymore.

I rode out at Stony again on Saturday. I know what happened when I crashed on the bridge now. There's a tree just to the left side of the bridge. When I'm leaning a little bit to the left around the corner, I tend to drop my left shoulder a little more near the tree (to make sure I don't hit it, I guess). When the bridge is dry, it's no problem, when it's wet, it's probably enough to put me down.

Saturday, I was working on breaking my habit of braking too much, too early. Just telling myself not to brake doesn't seem to be very effective. Instead, when I felt the urge to brake, I tried telling myself to look up and stick my elbows out. This seemed to work OK, and it gave me something to do.

I made it out to the track last night for cyclocross practice. I'm still pretty rusty on the 'cross bike. There were a number of things that I remembered during the course of the practice. Riding relaxed and light is really important out at Waterford Hills, since the ground is so rough. It took me a while to get back in the habit of thinking ahead a bit with gear selection (ie- shift to an easier gear going downhill, so you can be in the correct gear when you have to pedal back uphill). I also worked on my cornering technique; it's really the same as on the mountain bike, but the narrower tire is a little less forgiving.

A lot of the stuff I need to work on for cyclocross is the same stuff I need to work on for mountain biking. I find it easier to do this work at the track though, maybe because the course is short, so I go through the same corners a bunch of times over a short period of time. There's also usually no consequence for blowing a corner.

I really didn't feel like I was in very good "racing" shape. Mark C and others gapped me pretty easily. On the other hand, by the end of the night, I was going just about as fast as I was at the beginning, but with less effort. I was just doing a better job of maintaining my momentum around the course.