Nailing those descents.....
When I was racing in NZ back in February I lost 11 minutes on the 5th stage of the UCI women's tour of NZ because of poor descending skills that meant I missed the lead bunch up the road by 40 seconds. It was a technical descent and I didn't get the chance to practice it but I should of ridden it faster. So when I got back to the UK I decided to get this sorted so that it doesn't ever happen again. I've put far too much time into training to go and ruin a race because of bad skills...
Intially I had thought that the winter of cyclocross racing had made a big improvement and for off road it had, but obviously there is still some tweaking to do on the tarmac.
So a few weekends back I got some one on one coaching with Pollyanne Fitzgerald (working towards level 3 road and time trial qualification with BC) to try and learn how to nail those descents. Polly and I went searching for sketchy hills around Oxfordshire which is actually pretty hard to find, but after about 30 minutes driving we ended up in Kingston Lyle and found a few that were worth a go. Maybe your wondering why I never learnt how to descend properly when I first got into racing...Well it just never happened. I brought a second hand bike at University and just started entering races. No one told me the do's and don'ts and we all just kind of learnt on the job - I must of been a bit terrifying to ride next to in my first few races. That was a good 10 years ago and I think there are just so many more resources available now than when I first started riding.
So we found some hills that had a couple of very tight 's' bends. Perfect for practice. Polly sat down and drew the hill on paper and gave me the chance to tell her what I knew. I was heading in the right direction 'make the corners as straight as possible' I just wasn't straightening things out as much as I should.
So we had a few goes, first time I was too close to the potholes and still taking the S bends like a mountain bike trail- trying to hit those burmed corners doesn't really work for the road. Second time down I was actually ironing out those bends but horses came past so I had to slam on the brakes pretty hard..Attempt number three I pretty much had it sussed. Now it was just a matter of sorting out my bike posture (weight back but not too exaggerated), placing the feet level on the cranks when freewheeling, and remembering to keep the hands on the drops. Descending definitely feels a little easier these days, just in time for the summer racing calendar. Big thanks to Polly for devoting some spare time to help me out with this.
If you want to discuss any riding tips or talk coaching with Polly please send her an email at: neptune_solo@hotmail.com
