First descent: Red Trail at Left Hand Canyon


Today I enjoyed a real treat: A first run down a new double-red — DOUBLE EXTREME — trail near my house. The trail is designed for trials motorcycles. It’s awesome on an Enduro (if you don’t mind hiking).

I don’t mind hiking.

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Going all out


At this week’s PowerMax indoor training session at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, I showed up humble but ready to use what I have. I used it all.

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27.2 mm adjustable seatpost?

Lee,

I have been looking for an adjustable seatpost in a 27.2 for my Fisher X-Cal. I know that Gravity Dropper is a good one and is on the list, but I was also wondering if you had heard of the Kind Shock I7-R Remote-Adjust Seatpost? When you get a change let me know what you know about it/ think about it. I also wrote a little note to the people at Fox doing my best “please, please, please” for a 27.2 to be added to their prototypes of adjustable posts to come out for the 2012 year. No word on that yet, I guess I should have added one more please. Thanks for any information.

Jeff

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Moto vs bike: right-hand vs left-hand front brake


Hi Lee,

Since you ride both bikes and motos, I know you’ve had to deal with this conundrum, and I’m curious as to your take on it.

A long time ago I rode motos, mostly dual sport (and mostly on the street). I’m a newbie to MTB, and I think I’ve also decided I want a moto. (I’m 5’6″ — a TTR 125 maybe? But that’s not what this letter is about.) So here’s my question: how do you deal with the fact that motos have the front brake on the right, while MTB’s have it on the left (unless you’re in Europe, of course)? When I got my mountain bike, I decided since I was already used to using my right hand for the front brake, I’d just swap the right and left levers. But it occurs to me if (more like when) I ride a friend’s bike, or rent a bike (can you say lift-assisted DH? :-), it’ll be backwards, which could get me all balled up (literally, maybe. lol). And I’m not real up for going the other way and swapping the clutch and brake levers on my moto when I finally get it.

Help! How do you deal with this problem?

Love your site (and your book).

Kevin G
Gaithersburg, Maryland

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Attack position success story


Hi Lee,

Russ [my husband] and I were messing around at Arastradero, a local openspace area in Palo Alto. He was taking pictures of me, and I noticed how bad my body position was. After that, I started working on it, and we ended up with this picture.

Please let me know what you think. It took me a while to be able to do that again after a back injury (inflamed L5/S1 disc) with lots of PT. A few people told me that’s how I injured my back, but that body position does not put much pressure on the spine as long as your core muscles are strong enough to support yourself like that.

You’ll also see that I’m heavy feet/light hands too 🙂

Thanks for teaching me. I’m constantly learning, and I love that 🙂

-Anne

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The 2011 season starts now

On Saturday I enjoyed a self-propelled DH training session with a young pinner. We’re building the skills, fitness and intelligence he needs to rock next season. What are you doing?

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MMBSii is a great book (I think)

Hi Lee,

An amazing book you’ve written… I think. I made the mistake of buying the e-book version. What a waste of money. Adobe Digital Editions is some of, if not the worst piece of software I’ve used – completely unusable. I’ll presume that it’s not some nefarious plan by your publishers to upsell people to a printed copy, and that you and or your publishers genuinely want to make it easy for people to access the book … Please don’t force users to use Adobe’s Digital Editions (for the love of all that is humane in this world!).

Having fought with Digital Editions for two days, I give up; I’ll fork over more of my hard earned cash again for a printed copy of your book – because it truly looks worth the extra expense (from what little I’ve managed to see so far).

Kind regards,

Ben Wiles

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Ready for tomorrow


Indoor training, power meters, threshold wattage, road climbing and gyroscopic musings are all fine and dandy, but tomorrow I’m coaching a young downhill racer, and it’s time to Ride with a capital R.

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The countersteering can of worms

Eric and Geoffrey are asking some tough questions regarding Countersteering a cross bike (or any bike)?

They want to know whether a gyroscopic force exists in countersteering, how bikes differ from motos, and how they can use all this mumbo jumbo to go faster.

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Burning matches

In today’s PowerMax indoor cycling class, we did the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine’s standard time trail. 6.7 miles with some ups and downs. It was rather unpleasant, but it showed me where I am and taught me about pacing.

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Countersteering on a cross bike (or any bike)?


In comments for the post Local trails on the cross bike, Christopher asked:

Lee, what’s your take on the cornering technique described here?

http://www.cxmagazine.com/cornering-column-lee-waldman-2010

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Danny Mac-A-skill

Lee – I was just watching the new video from Danny MacAskill, that man is a bike Kung Fu master (and he has the perfect last name Mac-A-skill). His technique is the perfect visual representation of your instruction for jumping and landing in MMBSii. I guess if you can land as light as MacAskill the drop to flat limit for a dirt jump bike is approximately 20 feet! He truly is amazing.

Dave

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