Joe and I put in about 5 hours of riding at St Joe today. It was warm and drying so the locals showed up in droves which made the open sand sections and even the parking lot a little bit dangerous. None the less, we found a section of the woods that didn’t have much congestion and put in some laps.
The ground was frozen for the first hour so the grip was great. At the end of yesterday’s ride the goop was flinging up everywhere and the ruts were too slimy to get out of if you got sucked in so it was nice to have some grip for a while. All that moisture was frozen (it was 23F over night). That didn’t last too long tho as the sun started peeking in thru the trees and the temperature started to rise and the trail thawed.
I worked on some riding habits today. I don’t ride with my elbows high enough, I’ve learned. When my elbows drop I tend to slow down because I’m not attacking the trail and I also can’t react to unexpected knocks. My shoulders are pretty fatigued this evening so I’m hoping I’m on my way to making elbows up more of a habit.
Late in the day Joe and I made a very short lap on one of the sand flats near the parking lot. We did enough laps to get a line dug in the turns but the ruts didn’t get too deep because the ground is frozen just a few inches below the surface. The point of doing these laps was to practice turns. It was fun and I learned that I try too hard to go fast when I should be more focused on stuff like where my weight is, where I’m looking, and throttle control. I’ll keep working on turns.
Joe fired up his POV camera today, too. We did a few laps together collecting video then I put the camera on my helmet and did a few hot laps with the camera facing forwards then looking backwards. I’ll link to it as soon as Joe has it posted.
The bikes were dirty after two days of abuse in the wet conditions so we stopped at a car wash to tidy up. It’s way too cold and snowy at home to wash bikes there. Although we have a 7 hour drive home tomorrow, the bikes are already clean.
Now we’re parked in front of the TV in our hotel room watching the Atlanta SX. Life is good.
