The skills days are proving to be remarkably popular with riders at every level, wanting to improve their competence and confidence when riding off-road.
The range of cyclists signing up is broad, ranging from those who are about to embark on a multiday adventure to riders wanting to see what all this gravel stuff is all about.
To reflect this range, I’ve designed a progressive series of training days, starting with the ‘Introduction to off-road riding’, followed by ’Taking it further’. These sessions concentrate on the core basic skills, for example, your riding position and how to ride straight forward trails and bridleways safely and with confidence.
You don’t need any previous off-road riding experience to join either of these days but you do need to be a competent cyclist able to ride at a relaxed pace for a couple of hours.
To build on your abilities consider ‘Build Confidence!’ skill day, it does exactly that, we take the basic core skills and apply them to trickier, more complicated trails, for example, riding rooty paths or longer descents with loose or gullied surfaces.
The ‘Confidence’ day is aimed at reasonably fit riders who should be able to ride 15 to 20 miles off-road at a comfortable pace.
At the apex is the ‘Get ready for racing’ day, again, the title says it all, not only will the day work on applying the skills you have to the trails but also help you prepare for a race be this an MTB enduro or a competitive Gravel Event, how to enter, what to expect on the day and add a few tactics to consider!
You don’t have to be uber-fit to join the ‘Get ready for Racing’ day just be able to ride for about 20 miles at a reasonable pace, oh and have a competitive nature!
New for the Autumn – Cyclo Cross training days
About the only compensation autumn brings is the Cyclo-cross (often abbreviated to CX) season and in my book that’s a pretty big compensation – I live and breathe Cross, I’ve raced in the local league for decades, run CX for my local club, organised races including one at Leeds Castle that included the infamous ‘Wall’ and coached riders young and old.
So this Autumn I’ve added a new series of progressive skills days, starting with an ‘Introduction to Cyclo-cross’ following on to ‘Improve your Cyclo-Cross’ leading finally to ‘Race Cyclo-cross’
These sessions will start on Saturday 14th August and run through the Autumn until the end of October.