So I got a wee bit of a sunburn Sunday watching my rugby team beat the snot out of Santa Monica. It was a fun break from cleaning out the garage and kitchen yesterday. Tom and I are back in house renovation mode after deciding to take the house off the market and plan to stay in it for a couple of more years now. Next on the remodeling agenda, the garage and back yard to involve a new electric garage door opener, an actual workbench area, and a back patio. We'll see how much of this we can do by ourselves, but I am not worried because my hubby a very handy man.
So remember just last post, when I talked about how I will try to be good and repeat phrases of promise to myself about not taking unnecessary chances for the next couple of weeks? Well, Saturday morning a great opportunity came up and I could not resist the lure of a marginally questionable activity. There was a lot of reward for the risk though.
Let me explain. I got an email from a friend, announcing that there was going to be a mountain biking clinic put on by the local Phoenix chapter of the Luna Chix. The person running the clinic was going to be none other than Alison Dunlap, retired pro rider who has won more national and world medals than Marion Jones has lost. The opportunity to learn from a master (for only a small donation) doesn't come up very often and I wasn't going to let a quasi questionable knee stop me. I figured I could man up for the skills and drills portion of the day which was just going to be held on a grass field.
Showed up a 8am, admired all of the pretty bikes and professional looking people with their logo splashed jerseys, strapped on my knee brace and was ready to go. Alison went through a series of drills that may have been easy for some, but were new and challenging for me. We learned how to drop behind our seats, ride in a circle (for cornering), bunny hop (i suck) and balance stationary (i suck again).
Although, I was a little frustrated by my complete lack of strength in my bad quad which made it really hard to do anything requiring a hard crank (like a front tire wheelie), but overall I learned a ton. I was very careful and tried to always bail off my bike to the left on my good knee when I would start to tip over. And the advantage of being one of the worst people there was that I got a lot of special 1:1 time with Alison as she struggled correct my glaring shortcomings. I would love to someday attend her 5 day biking clinic in Moab, but I may need to win the lottery first.
At the end, the group rode to South Mountain for an instructional ride, and it took all my will power to do the right thing and go ride the road instead of joining them. I just can't take the chance of an endo quite yet (even though I haven't wiped out on this trail for months now). I really had to internally debate it though because I will be honest there is nothing I would have rather done than ride my favorite trail with pro bikers at that moment. Sigh. Patience is a virtue they say.
So remember just last post, when I talked about how I will try to be good and repeat phrases of promise to myself about not taking unnecessary chances for the next couple of weeks? Well, Saturday morning a great opportunity came up and I could not resist the lure of a marginally questionable activity. There was a lot of reward for the risk though.
Let me explain. I got an email from a friend, announcing that there was going to be a mountain biking clinic put on by the local Phoenix chapter of the Luna Chix. The person running the clinic was going to be none other than Alison Dunlap, retired pro rider who has won more national and world medals than Marion Jones has lost. The opportunity to learn from a master (for only a small donation) doesn't come up very often and I wasn't going to let a quasi questionable knee stop me. I figured I could man up for the skills and drills portion of the day which was just going to be held on a grass field.
Showed up a 8am, admired all of the pretty bikes and professional looking people with their logo splashed jerseys, strapped on my knee brace and was ready to go. Alison went through a series of drills that may have been easy for some, but were new and challenging for me. We learned how to drop behind our seats, ride in a circle (for cornering), bunny hop (i suck) and balance stationary (i suck again).
Although, I was a little frustrated by my complete lack of strength in my bad quad which made it really hard to do anything requiring a hard crank (like a front tire wheelie), but overall I learned a ton. I was very careful and tried to always bail off my bike to the left on my good knee when I would start to tip over. And the advantage of being one of the worst people there was that I got a lot of special 1:1 time with Alison as she struggled correct my glaring shortcomings. I would love to someday attend her 5 day biking clinic in Moab, but I may need to win the lottery first.
At the end, the group rode to South Mountain for an instructional ride, and it took all my will power to do the right thing and go ride the road instead of joining them. I just can't take the chance of an endo quite yet (even though I haven't wiped out on this trail for months now). I really had to internally debate it though because I will be honest there is nothing I would have rather done than ride my favorite trail with pro bikers at that moment. Sigh. Patience is a virtue they say.
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1 comment:
I'd love to watch a good game of rugga. Learning from the masters makes things seem so easy. Little thing you never thought about seem to fall in place.
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