The Metric Dirty Century Training Plan

Riding in the clouds above 3,000 feet this weekend. Regular readers may recall I signed up to ride the Sumter Metric Dirty Century on the trails near Augusta, GA next month. I promised to share my training progress here on the blog but the truth is that I havent really been

Transitioning Ski & Board Skills to the MTB Trail

Looking through the corner. The sport of mountain biking (and especially downhill mountain biking) shares many similarities with the sport of downhill skiing and snowboarding. For the average cross-country or all-mountain biker, most of the congruent skills occur in the mental decision-making department. I first learned of these similarities from my mountain

Learning Mountain Bike Skills at BetterRide Camp

I recently had the chance to spend three days at a BetterRide mountain bike skills camp. It's been a long time since I've been in school and the amount of information was overwhelming - in a good way! I learned a ton of ways to improve my mountain bike riding

Stop Pedaling in Circles - How to Improve your MTB Pedal Stroke

Most riders are told that a powerful, efficient pedal stroke means that you need to spin circles or pull through the top of your pedal stroke. However, some recent studies are calling that advice into question. Based on this new understanding of the pedal stroke several top coaches now call

MTB How To: Log Hops

Logs - they're a fundamental part of mountain biking in most areas of the country since where there are trees, there are trees that fall. Many riders hate logs and would like to see all of them cut off the trails. Others, like me, really enjoy riding them and are

Mountain Biking Nutrition 101

Askany roadie and they will tell you that mountain bikers survive on a diet of burritos, pizza and beer or soda. While that is mostly true, it turns out that good nutrition helps out no matter what kind of cycling you do. Food preferences are fairly subjective, so you will need

Getting In Shape & Losing Weight For Spring Mountain Biking

Some people are really good at riding the trainer andmaintaininga good diet over the winter months. I am not one of those people. I have put on exactly 10 lbs. since last fall, placing me just at the edge of the clydesdale class. :( The thought of lugging myself up all those

How To Carry More Speed Through Turns

First a story A couple of years ago a friend of mine who is a former pro rider came out to Colorado and naturally, we went for a bike ride. While he can pretty much drop me at will, through high speed turns it wasespeciallyembarrassing. At one point when he politely

BetterRide Core Skills 1 Camp: Why Everyone Should Take MTBing Lessons

As many of you know, I came to mountain biking with a background rich in downhill skiing. When I downhill skied as a kid I took beginner lessons, and then in middle school I started taking intermediate lessons, attending weekly skills clinics, and progressively learning more and more advanced techniques. Much

The Dirty Century Training Plan for Finishers

A 100 mile mountain bike ride is totally doable - you just need to train for it. While there are plenty of training plans out there, I'd like to share my finisher's plan for those who, like me, are only competing with themselves. Let's face it - racing 100 miles

Getting Down and Dirty: 100 Mile Mountain Bike Races

Breckenridge 100. Photo: Mountain Moon Photography. In the mountain bike world the closest thing we have to the runners' Marathon is the dirty century, or 100-miler as some like to call it. Truthfully, riding a mountain bike 100 miles is way more difficult than running 26.2 miles. My brother is a

Rocky Mountain Dealer Day and the Wade Simmons Bike Clinic

A couple weekends ago I had the awesome opportunity to hang out with two mountain biking legends: Wade Simmons and wild man Brett Tippi at the annual Rocky Mountain dealer day and Wade camp. Read on as it was one hell of a weekend Friday: Rocky Mountain Dealer Day Local rep and

The Strava Effect on Mountain Biking

In case you haven't heard of it, Strava is a website/mobile app that allows you to share information about your mountain bike rides using GPS data collected during the ride. The social network is built around the idea of tracking your fitness progress and challenging friends (and even strangers) which