Day 2: Lee McCormack Skills Clinic

Today we spent the morning in a parking lot.  You're in Vail and you spent the morning in a parking lot?  Yep.  Also in the parking lot was one of the best biking instructors around, a guy who coaches professionals, has written books, and taught us some good stuff!

Lee McCormack demonstrating "position 1," the base of all maneuvers.

  For about 2 1/2 hours we practiced bike position, turning, braking, balancing.  My brain and legs   were tired, but I took home a lot of good skills and drills to practice at home. 

After lunch on the mountain, we took the gondola up Vail mountain and got to test our new skills.

Alex coming out of a turn.

Lee did a lot more instructing on the mountain.  This was one section most of us walked down.

This is that same section from the bottom of it, right above where Lee was standing in the previous picture.

Big Mamba was a blue run we practiced on.  Later we ran Radio Flyer, a run that opened for the first time 2 days ago.

After a few runs we took a break and checked out Lee's books.

Coach Andrew demonstrating and having fun.  (Now you know why his teeth were brown in the picture further down.)

It was a little dusty.  My socks aren't normally two-toned.

After almost 3 hours and 27 miles of bike time, we headed over to Mike's house for a delicious dinner.  (Before that I went down to the river and sat in it for a bit.)  After dinner we tried on downhilling gear and got set up for tomorrow.  I'm a little nervous, but hey, YOLO!  (I just learned that means "You only live once" in teen lingo.)  Hopefully, I won't have to put all those pads and the full-faced helmet I tried on to the test!