A TRAINING day for End to End riders is to take place at South Barrule plantation next month.
The day is being organised by the Manx Mountain Bike Club and sessions will be led by last year’s End to End winner Elliot Baxter and last year’s third-placed finisher Rob Sorby.
The training sessions will help to raise funds for the Isle of Man mountain bike team’s Island Games fund.
Scott Morgan is managing the team in the build up to the games which take place in Bermuda in July.
He said the plan was also a means for the mountain bike team to put something back into the sport.
‘There’s a lot of people in the island who do the End to End and this may help some of them to get a better time,’ he said. ‘The idea is to have a simple workshop to look at techniques as well as things like training schedules, looking after yourself. There is also self massage – which is something a lot of riders don’t think of.’
The plan for the day is to have five locations around the plantation devoted to a particular mountain bike skill. Participants can then try out the different challenges in turn.
‘The idea is for people to be in smallish groups of about 15 and they can spend about half an hour on each skill, practise it, then move on,’ Mr Morgan said.
‘Someone will be on hand to give tuition and advice and they can put it into practice.’
The club is expecting a high take up for the course which lasts three hours on Saturday, April 13, and costs £15 per person. Organisers are considering running a follow-up course in August.
The course will run twice during the day - once in the morning and again in the afternoon and organisers are considering running one of those sessions exclusively for women and the other mixed.
Mr Morgan said: ‘Many women do it as their sole event and don’t want to be muscled out of the way.’
The following day, Sunday, is the first of the summer mountain bike race series and will be open to off-island competitors who may fancy coming over to do the skills workshop on the Saturday followed by the race on the Sunday, which takes in parts of the End to End course.
For more details see {http://www.manxmtb.com.manxmtb.com}. Entries for the Manx Telecom End to End opened at the start of March and stand at around 1,500 so far.
