Last Saturday saw the second of SKCC’s mountain bike skills sessions, this time a mixed crew of men and women gathered together under the banner ‘intermediate’. The weather was absolutely perfect and the rain over the days leading up to Saturday had patted down the dust and made the trails eminently rideable.

Firstly, our courageous leader, Pat, went over the bikes checking set up and tuning suspension so everyone had the best chance at a fun day. ‘Intermediate’ as a category embraces a fair breadth of skill levels and the group was quite mixed bag in terms of previous MTB experience, skills and confidence.

However, there would be precious few MTBers out there that have nothing left to learn about even relatively basic skills and Pat’s ability to tailor advice to each participant at their current level meant we all developed as riders through the session.

We did the classic anti-clockwise Lysty loop, stopping often at teachable obstacles to cover cornering, log roll overs, staying loose on the bike and letting it work for you, picking lines and all kinds of other gems that have hopefully gone straight to my unconscious to be automatically accessed on the trail.

Perhaps the most teachable moment for me was Pat’s earnest confirmation that milkshakes are the perfect recovery drink when we finished up at Trailmix for lunch. Thanks so much to Pat, and to Matt Pieterse, for putting so much effort into developing the MTB side of the club, for us that prefer fat tyres it’s greatly appreciated.
(Report by Sarah Haas Lockie)