January Enduro Coaching report
Our second instalment of enduro coaching with Gavin Carroll was split over two weekends in January 2022. The boys were first on 15 January and we had a full house for both sessions. Session 1 was the Top Finishers group with 8 participants and session 2 topped out at 12 participants. Myself, Steve Donellan and Gav took the lads for a pretty intense session of cornering! The talent was pretty unreal! Super day was had by all that travelled from near and far.
Jan 30th was the turn for the girls (14+) and Women. The first session was for top finishers and one lady from the previous session that was definitely good enough for the invite only session. 7 women participated and we worked on Manual drops and jumps for the majority of the session.
Session 2. wow. When this topped out at 12 within a few hours of being released I thought we are missing a trick here. Let’s add more slots as there were 4 emails pleading for them! As soon as the 4 extra slots were added another 4 emails came in and we eventually decided to push to 20. We had to enlist more help to make the rider / coach ratio better so I asked TCL Kevin Moran to jump on board. He agreed but was struck down with Covid before the weekend! I scrambled to find another TCL and asked Lorraine Byrne who duly agreed. This was super lucky as it brought some balance to the gender profile of the coaching squad vs. participants!
This session was really action packed. We would explain a skill and then jump in to groups of 5 (1 Coach per group) to practice the skill before returning to the larger group to move on to the next skill.
We then went up the mountain and sessioned corners and pumping. All our female participants nailed both of these skills. There is definitely a huge interest in Women’s Enduro and MTB as a whole. The progression and skill level from most of the ladies is incredible. Some of the ladies will be definitely bumped up to the invite only session next time around. Ladies travelled from all over including a group from Bangor, NI!
Report by Al Redmond, Enduro Co-ordinator, Cycling Ireland Off-road Commission
Some feedback quotes
Thanks everyone for the training yesterday. Was great fun and once again learnt lots.
Thanks a million for a great afternoon of coaching.
Great day. Thanks a million for organising.. Brilliant bunch of women, brilliant coaches and venue.. Warms my heart to see so many women on bikes..
Thanks so much Al and all the coaches, it was a brilliant day. Looking forward to the next one.
Nice and inclusive not intimidating for any of the girls who don’t know the scene . Gav and yourself are a good team . Gav has a class coaching manner he took it really seriously and that was nice it showed huge respect for the girls , very very good at explaining!!! Thank you it was greatly appreciated.
