Saturday 19 July 2008 - Manly Dam - AMBC Clinic

On a beautiful winter's day (9am to 3pm, with glorious blue sky all day), Stephe attended a Trailbreakers Clinic run by AMBC.

The course was run by Matt de Belin who was an exceptionally nice chap, and was attended by seven keen 'students of the bike', including Hans (of recent NobMob and potential ShutupandRide fame...).

We spent the morning setting up the bikes at Manly Vale school, practising pedal position and track stands, popping the front wheel, some bunny hops (and my biggest challenge for the day, trying to perfect (heck, even just achieve) the front wheel, then back wheel bunny hop) then attacking the first hill on the Manly Dam loop, just past the school. After a bit of lunch, we then tried some small and then slightly larger roll offs, and then went back and did some technique for climbing those sort of obstructions rather than rolling down them.

The course certainly moved some folk from a clear avoidance of those challenges, to a realisation that they were comfortable with them, which helped in the later part of the session, when we did a lap of the Dam.

Along the way, we stopped at opportune moments to discuss style and technique.

All in all, a good day out- although I think few of our crew will really benefit from this level of course. That said, given the skill of Matt and what we know of the other instructors, I reckon there would be great benefit in getting them along on a ride for some 'dynamic instruction' sessions at one of our more technical efforts one day, assuming a deal could be struck...?

Matt took some video, which I will link to in due course (if ever he posts it).

And, finally, Matt is leading a ride out at Newnes (probably around the places we nearly killed our children last time) in early September - which might be worth thinking about (the benefit of having skilled riders along with us, that we could ask questions of along the way, and all food supplied - the disadvantage of paying for something we've done bits of ourselves, without a guide (but we all know how *that* turned out, eh!), and having to deal with other people (!)).

And, just testing out the options, here is the map for the location of the course:

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