Learning the Hard Way

This week I was able to get two rides in. I rode enders fault south loop trail out at woolly hollow and and the trail at cadron settlement park.

The first ride out at woolly hollow was really good. I was going for a new fast time on the trail and was able to beat my old record by over five minutes. It was an enjoyable ride and it’s nice to push yourself every now and then just to see what you’re capable of. This ride isn’t what today’s blog is about.

Cadron trail is the ride that taught me a lesson. I mentioned in a previous blog that cadron trail has a few features (things like burms and jumps) that make it exciting. I’ve also mentioned that I ride this trail with my buddy the majority of the time. This friend is a full-time videographer that works for a production/ ad agency and really likes to record us riding these features. Well in this trail there is a dirt jump that’s you can get some good air on before going down a good hill. I have ridden over this feature multiple times, including this time, with no problems. I was able to get a good bit of air for the video and landed smoothly it was after the land that I learned a valuable lesson, fight your instinct. Since he was recording and not on his bike I was going to stop before going down the steep hill. I realized after landing I was going a little too fast grabbed my brakes and grabbed my front brakes WAY too hard. We all know that your body has inertia so when my front brakes locked up, I went flying over the handle bars. Fortunately I didn’t break any bones (did have cuts on my back, shoulder, and legs), but unfortunately he stopped recording right before I ate it.

So the moral to this blog is to fight instinct, or at least be smart, and not use your front brakes when you have speed right before a steep downward slope.

Woolly hollow

After the wipeout at cadron