Monday, December 21, 2009

We're Famous

Just wanted to let all of you know...We're Famous! In case you hadn't already heard, Mrs. Aubert submitted a great story on our mountain bike team to local newspapers. A great story ran in the Pasadena Outlook last week, and may run in the La Canada Valley Sun and Outlook very soon.

Thank you again to our sponsors for your help this year!!



Thursday, December 10, 2009

More Skills Training

It's winter time. Short days. Cool rides. Bust most importantly, it's the time of the year for us to work on our mountain biking skills.

It should be easy enough, but it's not. Riding a mountain bike, at any speed, takes some talent. We all want to make sure that we're prepared as our rides go longer, and faster. Our first race is in March, and we're going to be ready!

Here are some videos from our last ride on Wednesday.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Our Team Rocks!

Today was the first day of our club rides for the 2009-2010 season, and boy did we have fun! 17 students made it out, and along with the coaches, we looked like an army cruisong around on the trails!

Today's ride focused on a lot of basic mountain biking skills that will help get us to our first race in March. We have students from all four grades in our club, and everyone got along great. The best news of all...no crashes! OK...we did have a couple of tip-overs, but some of us are still getting used to the clipless pedals.

Regrouping
Practicing Braking Modulation

Coach Bird and Coach Nick talking about gears


Shift, shift, shift!

More drills

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

O-Dark-Hundred

What happens when you ask teenagers to get up at 6:00am on a Sunday? Well, if it's to help setup a cyclo-cross race course, they do it! On Sunday over 10 St. Francis MTB Club members and their parents helped setup the course for the annual Gene Galindo Memorial Turkey-Trot race in Glendale.

Not only did we enthusiastically help setup the course, Steve and Eddy also raced! It was early, but we all had a great time. Thanks to Eddy for getting us our team sweatshirts, and to Mr. Kronfli for bringing the hot chocalate, coffee, and donuts!

The gang, in the dark.

Matt, Lance, and Matt.

Eddy and Steve made over 40 sand bags.

Mr. Garrison and his son Nick.

Cameron was pounding stakes.

Eddy showing good 'cross form.

Steve racing his 30 lb mountain bike. That's hard to do!