It's Going Down

Put my butt over my back tire
As long as they don't touch
Laser focused, bleary eyed
Till the gravity's too much
And I'll do anything you say
Through the cramping of my hands
And I'd be smart to walk away,
But you're quicksand

This slope is treacherous
This path is reckless
This slope is treacherous
And I, I, I like it

The past couple of weeks have been so full of new and interesting gravity-fueled experiences that it has almost negated my disappointment in the TSE 3-day stages. Since my last post, I have experienced my first trip to a bike park, had a private lesson, and made some huge jumps in my downhilling ability on my home turf.

Of course, just this morning I still found myself trying to come up with a scheme to get a timing chip for the TSE enduro stage, because for all of the practicing that I’ve been doing, I really want to see how I stand up against real, live people in the same conditions on the same day, instead of comparing myself to somewhat inaccurate Strava data. At the same time, imagining myself dropping into the bottom part of Wildcat to crowd of people heckling and taking pictures still kind of freaks me out, so maybe it’s just as well.

Even if I don’t make this year’s TSE enduro day, I still have a lot going on lately in gravity world. Frank and I celebrated Easter Sunday by joining enduro-cats Michaela and Sam, as well as their assorted dude friends, for the opening weekend of Mountain Creek Resort in New Jersey. We were quite lucky to have gone on Sunday, as we heard that there were hour-long lines for the lift on the actual opening day of Saturday. When we arrived on Sunday, there were maybe five minute lines, and by the afternoon, you could just walk right onto the lift.

My first downhill park experience was different than I imagined, and it was a good learning experience. The “easy” trails were actually kind of harder for me than the black diamond rocky trails that we went on. We didn’t even see most of the really hard stuff, but the rocky trails that we did attempt were actually at a good level for testing my limits. They weren’t as steep or screaming fast as some of the State College fall-line trails, but they required more complicated line choices and had bigger low-speed drops. I was actually pretty happy with some of the moves that I pulled off on those trails, but I found myself kind of frustrated on the green and blue trails where I struggled on all of the little jumps and berms in the loose, dry dirt. Those trails were very easy ride, but very hard to ride fast, at least for me. I’m looking forward to checking out Blue Mountain after it opens and seeing how it compares.

Last week Harlan Price of Take Aim Cycling was in State College, so Frank and I got to take a half-day private lesson with him on Thursday. I’d hoped to meet up with him down in Harrisonburg earlier in the winter, but that didn’t work out. There are both advantages and disadvantages to taking lessons on your home trails. While it’s a good opportunity to improve at what you ride most often, it’s hard to get better at the things you’re bad at because you never do them. In our case, that means flowy, turny, bermy stuff. It would be nice to learn to flow futuristic some of the more “fun” descents down in Harrisonburg, but I guess we’d still have trouble putting it into practice when we got home. Harlan did his best to give us practice strategies for improving our cornering in the conditions available and for practicing on our “park days”, so hopefully when we race outside of State College we’ll know how handle it. It also seems that I’ve found such a good, stable descending position now that I never want to leave it, so my next step is to start moving around on the bike more.

Whatever I’ve been doing lately, it is working so far. I’ve managed some huge descending PRs and even a few non-descending ones in the last couple of weeks. The two that I’m most exciting about are Wildcat and Ruff Gap. In the last couple of weeks I’ve finally made it the point of descending Wildcat without getting scared and getting off my bike, and suddenly I’m almost fast at it. I also did Ruff Gap for the first time this year and the third time ever on Saturday, and I PR’d it by nearly 2.5 minutes, finishing a frustratingly-close one second behind the QOM. I think that’s really amazing because a) I mostly walked it for the first time 13 months ago b) I haven’t had a bunch of chances to memorize the trail like I have with many of the others. I was going that fast on only very vague memories that weren’t even that accurate. The trail was much longer and more technical that I remember, and not as steep. I definitely want to ride it more, as it’s actually more of a challenge to do well than a lot of our normal Wednesday EWS trails. I also need to do Ross more, as I couldn’t quite get past the slidey leaves/steep drop combo on Saturday without getting freaked out. I guess I'm still not superwoman...yet.

This weekend we will see how my much improved skills in Rothrock translate to trails I’ve never seen before, as Frank and I will be celebrating our first year as husband and wife in the traditional manner of racing enduro followed by eating year-old mountain bike themed cake. We’re heading to Big Bear Lake in West Virginia for the first race of the WV Enduro Series. I’m hoping that a low-key race on similar-but-different trails to what I’m used to might help relieve me of my enduro curse. When I’m riding so well at home I’m often torn between the desire to find out if it translates to less familiar trails and the fear that it won’t and that I will suck when taken out of my comfort zone. I’m doing my best to think of it as a check-up for my progress and not take it too personally if I don’t do well.

Overall, things have been going pretty well for my riding lately, even if this spring has turned out nothing like I planned. The TSE is still going to be a huge sufferfest, but I’m excited about what other possibilities the year might have it store. I’m crossing my fingers that it will all be downhill from here.