A mate and I were lucky enough to score a spot on the Graham Jarvis Training Day held on private property at Bacchus Marsh today. Once finding the location and saying g'day to Fab I feel the usual urge, PRP time, as I look for the roll of tickets I notice that I'll have to wait as one Graham Jarvis is heading for his PRP and beat me to the drop toilet. So I think I can happily go down in history as the guy that sat on the bog after Graham.
We kit up and head to the camp fire to have a bit of a meet and greet and look at Grahams borrowed bike (Husaberg TE 300) so he can talk us through some basic bike setup. He would talk us through the exercise, demonstrate how to do it, than if there were other things he thought of, tell us again before letting us have a crack at it, which throughout the day, provided Graham with varying degrees of laughter.
First up was bike position and we practiced this by driving through creek beds over rocks and also long grass with hidden rocks. Throttle and clutch control was next with slow turning lock circles and then lock to lock figure 8's. Riding off camber sections and a couple of different tracks. Putting quite a few things together we then tackled a steep downhill into a quick turn and power on to try climb a dusty hill. It was great to see Graham do these challenges and see how easy someone can do it using the right techniques. From memory everyone failed this everytime.
Next up was some tight turns through trees on downhill off camber slopes which was interesting. Moved onto slow mono's and practiced them on an uphill section which led to the next progression of trying to mono while seated and dragging your feet for balance. These may just sound like tricks but for the rest of the day it seems like these were the key techniques to being a good rider. We had lunch and another chat and Graham had convinced me to wind my handle bar stops in. THis is one thing I have never thought of.
After lunch we tackled some logs and I proceeded to go over the bars on the very first attempt! Trying different things with monos onto logs with the front wheel and roll along the length of it. We then went on to tackle bigger logs and taught some little technique for getting over a log once you have stuffed it. A bit of a trail ride than onto practicing mono'ing onto a crate on top of tractor tyre (I think I may have broken it!). We then practiced some popping mono's and tryiing to turn on the spot. We moved onto creek beds and tackled dropping into them when you cant see the ground below than rode along the creek again to see if we noticed if anything was rubbing off.
We took on the river banks next which provide some great video footage and finished up the day tackling some hills which only Graham got up (about 200 mm of soft dirt covering which made for carnage up the hills and almost impossible to walk up hills and really tricky descents (usually involving me throwing my bike down the hill and sliding down with/after it.
Graham is a really top bloke and offered advice midway between practice sessions. I took footage of most of the day so as soon as I finish the annual weekender footage I'll edit some up. Heaps of carnage and broken subframes and plastics.
I forgot to mention, in total for the day we covered a massive 21.1 km according to my speedo. It was a different type of training session and that really meant being physical with the bike and I was cramping in the legs throughout quite a bit which usually happens after 80km+ of tight trails.
[youtube:t5hq8912]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktIUh5XXR08[/youtube:t5hq8912]
