Fellow assistant coach and parent of a team member Troy and I traveled to the Idaho Leaders' Summit in Eagle last weekend to undergo training and get some coaching tips from our Lord and Savior Lee McCormack (and, as a bonus, take advantage of the much more varied opportunities for craft beer sampling in the Boise area).
We left Pocatello on Friday afternoon and arrived at The Edge brewing company right as our stomachs started to grumble, and our first glance at the bar made me feel like I was back at a proper Denver tap house:
So many choices! Also, the bartender had lots of tattoos and an ironic facial hair thing going on. I told him I wanted ALL THE BEERS, so he asked if I trusted him, then poured me a flight of 4 of their best. He chose wisely, so after that flight I had another and a gigantic burger as well.
Once I had mopped most of the barbecue sauce off my face, Troy and I continued on to our lodgings for the weekend: his sister's house! She had generously offered to put us up, and we were happy to save the team a few bucks by forgoing a hotel. Even better, they had an enormous, very enthusiastic young German shepherd named Henry, who immediately shanghaied me into playing tug with him (I lost). After a glass of delicious oatmeal stout with our hosts, we were off to bed and resting up for a long next day of Powerpoint presentations.
The summit began at 8:00am, so Troy and I left the house at 7:00 in search of bagels and coffee. When we arrived at the venue, we found...bagels and coffee. Blast. I chose a seat at a table about halfway from the front and close to the exit, but as soon as the room filled up, a guy came and asked if there was space for him to squeeze in next to me, then proceeded to slurp the bejesus out of his coffee for the entire morning. Blast again. This is why I can probably never go back to school: other peoples' noises.
The guys running the show, Austin McInerny and Dylan Gradhandt, kicked things off by having everyone introduce themselves and say where they were from and what they hoped to get out of the summit. The answers to the latter question mostly followed the theme of getting more kids on bikes. There were lot more women in attendance than I had expected, and they all (myself included) expressed a specific goal of getting more girls on bikes and onto teams. Several people also mentioned creating lifelong cyclists, and biking has an advantage in this area over other sports, because how many kids keep playing football or soccer or water polo after high school?
After the introductions, we dove right in to starting and managing teams. Austin's presentations included lots of personal anecdotes from his time as a coach (he's now the head of NICA) and were very relatable and easy to follow. Next, we got a quick tutorial about registering teams online, and crash courses on the NICA rulebook, connecting with and motivating the kids, convincing school administrators to let us steal kids from their precious football teams so they can get fewer concussions by riding bikes instead, raising funds and finding sponsors, and involving parents in the community. It was an avalanche of information, and since they gave us flash drives already loaded with the slides and a whole mess of other stuff, I just jotted down ideas for our team here and there. I especially liked the suggestion of a "bike check" at the beginning of the season, which wold be a mandatory meeting of all the kids where they learn how to make sure their bikes don't have flat tires and aren't about to break into a million pieces (aka trail-ready). We also heard about a flat-fixing competition, with the first person to swap a tube and pump the tire up to a predetermined PSI winning some kind of prize; I thought that was pretty ingenious, and I hope we can incorporate it into a team practice at some point. We're lucky it's only April and we've got plenty of time for planning all the season's activities.
For pretty much the entire time we were sitting there, it had been raining continuously outside, and the prospect of a group ride once we had adjourned for the day looked bleak. However, about an hour before we were scheduled to be done, the rain let up and the sun made a timid appearance. It was decided that we should venture onto the trails around the Avimor Community Center (where the summit was being held) and turn around if we encountered high levels of mud. Those of us that were itching for a ride hustled to get changed and saddle up before the weather turned nasty again, but we only made it about a mile when rain started falling. We regrouped at a spot with a vantage point of a steep, tough-looking switchback climb that will be part of the course for the Idaho league State Championships in October, then the locals led the group up a pretty tight ravine where the trail was mostly flowy singletrack with some rocks thrown in here and there and a couple of creek crossings. It was reassuring to be on lower ground when thunder started rumbling, and because the trail wasn't overly muddy, we only turned back when the ravine opened up onto more exposed ground. I had very wisely elected to wear a cotton flannel shirt on the ride, so the descent was a mite chilly.
Of course, it was still a good time, though it was a bit disappointing to discover the lack of a bike wash station (aka hose) to ameliorate our crunchy drivetrains. The center did have very nice shower facilities, but, me being me, I had forgotten a towel. I dried off as best I could with a T-shirt, then Troy and I made our way to the Winding Creek Grill in Eagle, where the organizers had reserved a table for the folks who hadn't had enough of hanging about with the same people all day. It turned out to be a nice small group, and we talked bikes and kids and race schedules over good microbrew drafts.
The next day was almost entirely devoted to a skills/coaching clinic with Lee McCormack, but first we had a useful presentation on risk management and insurance. I discovered that: A) I'm going to need a bigger pack for spare parts, emergency rations and a first aid kit, and B) coaches aren't supposed to transport kids in our personal vehicles, because car insurance companies are jerks. We're also supposed to limit physical contact with the kids for obvious reasons. Commence air high fives!
Lee took the floor shortly after, and went through some basics of coaching, as well as bike setup and body position fundamentals. His mantra (or one of them, at least) is "heavy feet, light hands," and the cornerstone of his on-the-bike teaching is the "attack position." He gave us a visual of this concept by pulling two tables together, balancing his bike between them on the cranks, and straddling the bike with his feet holding the pedals in place. Then he demonstrated how his weight stayed centered over the bottom bracket whether he pushed the bars forward as in a descent or pulled back for a steep climb. It was an excellent way of getting the idea across, and it came to him, he said, in a fever dream during a bout of influenza. Hey, whatever works.
We broke for lunch, and because I am wildly inept at putting in my contact lenses, I went to wrestle them onto my eyeballs and put on riding gear before eating. When I returned, someone had found the streaming video of the World Cup downhill race in Lourdes and put it up on the projector. I saw Emmeline Ragot smash Manon Carpenter's time and half of Rachel Atherton's run before we were summoned out into the sunshine for the practical part of the summit.
I had previously taken two clinics with Lee in Boulder, and I always waved hello when I saw him at Valmont Bike Park, so I was gratified when he stepped into the middle of the circle to address us as a group, stopped short, pointed at me and asked if I had done a clinic with him before. But the downside of this was that he singled me out a couple times as an example. And as anyone who knows me knows, I (sarcasm alert) just love being the center of attention. Well, I guess it's true when there is tequila involved.
Lee took us over to a stretch of not-busy road and started demonstrating techniques of proper attack position, braking, and turning, then divided us into two groups: one performing, the other coaching. I know the point of the whole exercise was to practice giving constructive guidance, but it felt so bizarre to coach other coaches.
Here is a not remotely interesting picture of Lee telling us we're doing it all wrong:
A quick, not at all catty observation of my fellow participants: the bike/outfit combination really ran the gamut from an enduro-ish vibe such as on myself and Dylan, and major Trail Freds on hardtail 29ers in their full matching spandex team kits. Most folks were somewhere in between, but the notable outliers were the dude on the commuter, complete with fenders and pannier rack, and the fatbike with funky handlebars like these:
Hey, people should ride whatever they like. But I reserve the right to be amused by them. I'm sure that I look like a total doofus to
Lee then led us to a parking area with a short, steep embankment and drilled us on staying loose on the bike to soak up bumps and ride smooth, then on getting out of the saddle and straightening arms for more efficient climbing. At the end of our allotted Lee time, I accosted him for a selfie with me as Instagram proof of my being on a bike for Day 12 of 30 Days of Biking.
Then, after changing and thanking Austin and Dylan for putting on the summit, Troy and I hit the road. We brainstormed ideas on skills clinics, team events and everything else, and arrived back in Pocatello ready to give our report to Coach Dan and get started on an awesome season.
