Betterride Camp

I made the looong drive down to Richmond, VA this past weekend to participate in a Betterride mountain bike skills camp. The drive down was pretty uneventful, except that I got stuck in traffic around Washington DC. I was nearly parked on the expressway for about 2 hours... not so fun.

The next morning, I got completely turned around (not lost... no, no, not lost) on my way to camp and what should have been a 20 minute drive took me about an hour. Fortunately, I had left super early, so I was only a few minutes late. Still, it wasn't exactly the way I wanted to get things started.

It seemed like we didn't do too much the first day of camp, but it was probably the most useful day. We spent most of the morning working on vision and body position on the bike. I had a couple of "ah-ha" moments, where I learned some detail that I wasn't doing quite right and found that it made a big difference. Later we worked on wheelies and bike setup. Gene said I got points for my short stem, but lost points for my narrow bars. We rode the trails at the park a little in the afternoon. I'd thought that the riding might be quite a bit different than I was used to, but it really wasn't. The trail at Forest Park reminded me of Bloomer back home. The weather was also awesome that first day; it was in the mid-80's and sunny, a nice change from Michigan.

We got a little lucky with weather the second day. It was supposed to rain almost all day, but we only got sprinkled on a little. Temperatures were much cooler though. Anyway, we spent most of the second day working on cornering. Gene didn't teach us anything revolutionary, but having someone explain and demonstrate things in person made a big difference. I did pretty well in the parking lot drills, but I noticed that I was reverting back to my old habits on the trail. The good thing was that I recognized what I was doing wrong and I know how to fix it.

After camp on the second day, I went for a ride by myself on the trails at Pocohontas State Park. I noticed that I was flowing pretty well during my ride, which is a little unusual for me on my first ride on a new trail. At first, I thought it was the trail itself (which was a nice flowy trail), then I realized that I was looking much farther ahead than I normally do. I think what was happening was that I was looking far enough ahead to consistently link up the corners, and the result was a much smoother ride. Pretty cool...

For day 3, we were back at Forest Park, and the weather was nice again. We worked on switchbacks and lifting the rear wheel over obstacles. I don't really ride a whole lot of "real" switchbacks, so it was good for me. Gene didn't teach us real bunnyhopping, but I talked about it with him a little bit, and I realized that I'd been going about it wrong. He showed us how the wheelie you do for a bunnyhop is different than a pedal or coaster wheelie.

Afterward, I drove up to Kevin's house in Baltimore, and then came home the next day. Even though Baltimore isn't a whole lot closer than Richmond, I was still grateful for a slightly shorter drive on Monday.

On the whole, doing the camp was definitely worthwhile. I think that having some defined techniques and practice drills will help me a lot. Gene is also a very positive guy, and I noticed that I had a much more positive attitude about my riding by the end of the weekend.


Obviously, I haven't had a lot (or any) time to practice since I've been home, but I already noticed a difference at 'cross practice last night. In the past, I'd been a little tentative in the faster corners on our course, but last night I was much more confident and noticeably faster through these corners.

Speaking of 'cross practice, Jeff noticed (and I noticed... once he said it) that I come into the barriers pretty fast, but leave really slow. I think it's a combination of things. One is that I don't really run hard between the barriers. Since I come in fast, I just sort of let my momentum bleed off as I go. Second is that I'm not comfortable getting on my bike at higher speeds. If I'm honest with myself, I'd say that even though I do practice barriers (actually, just one barrier) in the backyard, I don't practice them very well anymore. I probably need to build a second one, and then I need to work on not ending the drill (not slowing down) until I'm back on the bike and my feet are in the pedals. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I go over the barriers exactly like I practice...