On June 14, I tried my first laps at Talking Rock Arena – a local motocross track. This was a the venue where I demoed a few Yamaha bikes a couple years and got me excited about riding real dirt bikes. The venue has a skills loop / play area, and proper MX track. I started out on the skills loop which consisted of a couple small doubles but they had very sharp lips as they’d just been graded. Terrified to attempt a double, I gave it enough speed to get some compression and a little air but land short of the second hill. This first “hit” sent a severe pain into my elbow where I’ve been suffering from medial epicondylitis (aka golfers elbow). I returned to the pit and added pressure to my forks which were sprung for an XC rider weighing 80 lbs less than me.

I know it was going to be a short day, but a kept taking laps, skipping the doubles, and practicing a fairly nice table-top jump where I got a little bit of air. Motocross is a blast – you feel like you’re going so fast when, on video, it’s a sad trombone. By the end of the day, I was doing laps on the main track – rolling the sharp doubles but attempting to get a little speed up some of the singles / tabletops, and focusing on being in a good body position and doing turns well. One jump sent me into an endo that I recovered, but practically soiled my pants.

MX is going to be a big part of my training as it will enable to develop confidence and speed in tricky, rutted, sandy conditions.