Personal Strengths and Areas For Improvements:

 

Strengths:

In the past I have performed road cycling on a number of occasions with my family, and sometimes independantly. There are various differences between a road and mountain bike, such as weight, frame size, wheel perimetre size and tyre tread. It has been around four to five months since the last time I had ridden a mountain bike at Holdam, Exeter so I knew it would be difficult to transfer my road cycling skills onto a mountain bike due to the differences between the two types of bikes.

 

However, saying this I think I performed well from the start to the finish. I believe I transferred my skills efficiently by performing each skill that I learnt at Holdam. For example, I learnt how to perform the attack position by adjusting my body into the correct position, depending on the gradient of hill. I believe I performed these areas when necessary at a high level because I felt safe, stable and was travelling in the direction I wanted to go. I rarely had to stand up onto the pedals to help me peddle up hill more efficiently and faster. This meant my fitness levels and strength were at a high level. Also, thankfully I was able to stay on the mountain bike without losing my balance. This meant I didn't cause any injuries to myself or others.    

 

Areas For Improvements :

 

However, there were times where I was cycling too close to the person infront of me. This meant I had to perform an emergency stop quite viscously to stop myself from cycling into the student infront of me, and causing major injuries. Looking back at this activity, I should have cycled maybe a distance of 2-3 mountain bikes behind, to resolve this issue. On some occassions, I felt that I was changing gear either too early or too late. For example, we did cycle up hills which had a steep gradient and I changed down in gears when on the hill, instead of before. This had an effect on my speed, and I found it much more difficult to cycle up these specific hills. To improve this issue, I think I need to prioritise changing down my gears first so I can suit my speed accordingly with the hill. I think I was wearing too much clothing for this activity which meant my body temerature got hot quickly. Thankfully, this didn't have an effect towards my cycling performance, but I did have to re-hydrate myself quite often which meant I lost a lot of fluid in a short period of time. Also, I had to ask the instructors to attach my chain back onto the chain ring when it had fallen off. If I wasn't feeling comfortable putting the chain back on then I could have researched this issue myself in my free time.