A weekend of training

With my first race of the year only a couple of weeks away and only about 5 hours clocked up on my new (to me) bike, I decided I needed a full weekend of solid training.

I started on Saturday morning with some drills to practice technical skills, some of which I got from a DirtWise DVD (good ol' Wattsy):

• Full lock figure 8's
• Rear brake slides
• Slow wheelies
• Nose wheelies
• Power slides
• Weaving around obstacles at speed

During the rest of the weekend I rode a combination of sticky mud, tree roots, ruts, climbs, cambers and insanely slippery grass track! I also managed to squeeze in a nice relaxing road ride into the countryside to cool off and take in the scenery.

When I got back from my ride on Sunday, I set to work preparing the bike for the up-coming Brechfa Rally. I cleaned it well, then greased everything like I normally do. Then I moved onto my "race-prep" as I like to call it, which is basically just doing my own scrutineering.

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, scrutineering is the inspection of your bike, which is performed by the club running the event, before you start. It's carried out for safety reasons and if you don't pass, you don't race.

I found a couple of things; a couple of bolts that needed tightening, a missing cable tie on one of the plastics and more importantly, worn front wheel bearings. Off came the wheel and half an hour later it was back on again and sitting snug with no play.

Spot on and ready to race!