In search of Mojo

After my last update it seemed I’d left whatever mojo I had back in Vegas… So – what else could I do but go back and look for it! I’d booked a skills session with mtbskillsclinics.com to coincide with Shane racing the 2nd round of the N-duro Summer Cup. 3 long days in the forest (including a race)– surely that would be long enough to hunt down and recapture the mojo? Well, as so often happens, life had other plans for me as I came down with a rather nasty episode of food poisoning on the Wednesday night. I’ll spare you the gruesome details – suffice to say I was feeling a little less than my best when we set off on Saturday. (3 days without coffee is neither natural nor healthy!!) On our reccy ride of the unfamiliar parts of the 25km course it became obvious that I still had some recovering to do. While my tum had finally settled my energy levels were way down and I was feeling as flat as a squashed pancake. A quick consultation with Coach – and it was decided to flag the race and go for an easy sift through the forest instead. I was disappointed, but realistically had nothing to gain by racing.
Monday – my skill session was booked to start at 10.00am, which left time for a nice, leisurely breakfast at Milly’s (trying to make up for lost eating!) – yay for cooked breakfasts.

We met Gabby and Dodzy (who had just got off a plane after racing in the South Island) in the Waipa Mill car park. We started out by reinforcing some of the skills from the Phundamentals course on the fire roads, then into the trails to put them in to practice. We headed for a couple of rooty spots that I’d never managed to clear – and I eventually managed to wobble my way through them. I also found that I can, in fact, go faster than granny-gear pace through flowing singletrack! I can’t say enough good things about Gabby – she has a great eye for what you’re doing (or not doing) on the bike, the ability to break things down into terms that I can understand (I learn best with key words) and, most importantly, seemingly endless patience when faced with Scaredy Cats like me! It would appear that I had indeed located some much-needed mojo. I still have bucket loads to learn, and so much practice to do before the techniques that I have learned become habit… but I feel like I made some really good progress over the weekend.