Anne the Awesome and I met at Burchfield last night to ride our cross bikes. Anne took me around her personal cross loop, which contains at least a few sections of trail I was afraid to ride on my mountain bike not too long ago. It felt pretty good, though. I'm starting to get more comfortable on the cross bike again after riding only a mountain bike this summer and I really think I might get past my ridiculous "I can't ride that on my cross bike, it's too much like a road bike" fear. (There's a certain race I'll never get out of my head. It's that one when I was actually hanging in pretty well with the pack until I hit that downhill that I just couldn't make myself ride. I ended up walking down and losing tons of time.)
After we rode, we worked on technique for dismounting and remounting. My normal dismounting technique goes something like this: Come to a complete stop. Dismount bike like I would in the parking lot. Anne attempted to teach me the correct way to do it and some of it actually sunk in. By the time I left I was not looking like a complete idiot. (Like I did when I dismounted the bike and left my shoe attached. See top photo.)Proper technique for dismounting and remounting in cross is really important because of all those pesky barriers. If you don't use proper technique, how will you ever get those super cool looking pictures of yourself flying through the air onto your bike? Seriously, Anne said you can help make up for not being as fast as your competitors by being adept at technique. I know I'm losing a lot of time in these sections, and if I could master this I'd certainly make it through the course faster.
I attempted to take some pictures of Anne to show what it's supposed to look like, but I kept missing her. I guess I need some help with my picture-taking skills, too.
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