3rd April, Intermediate course

Richard's pre course info showed that he'd ridden in plenty of places including the Lakes so I knew we would be starting on a higher level than is usual. A couple of showers before we started meant that some of our challenges would have an extra slickness to beef up the challenge though and luckily there are several variations to the route that means every level of "intermediate" can be catered for. We were soon fine tuning corners and climbs and moving onto the technical stuff. "I didn't know stuff that steep was rideable" (or words to that effect) were soon being uttered. Unfortunately I was too busy watching to snap that one. We finished by pushing the speed and effeciency aspects of riding a hardtail down gnarly descents and were both suitably tired but happy by the end of the day. Shame I then had to ride back up the massive hill (we'd avoided by uplifting that morning) to get the car! The photo on the left was an attempt to convey the speed but it only sort of worked.

"Hi Steve,
Thanks for the course! Really cool montage photo too :) It was great to learn some new techniques and to push myself to do things I would of otherwise just skipped or walked. Also giving me the confidence to try some of those small jumps was great fun and I'm sure I'll trying it a lot more on the trails around and about Leeds this week :)

Thanks for the comments as well, I'll keep them in mind especially keeping a bit further back on the steeper bits as I think it will improve my speed and confidence on the descents. 

Thanks again for a great course.

Richard"