I have a morning coaching session with Katy Curd at the FOD tomorrow, which finishes at 1. After some lunch i’ve got a few hours before needing to head off. I’ve not ridden there before, so wondering what would be best. A couple of runs of the DH trails and push up as amny times as legs/body allow or ride the red or blue or fitness allowing both. Not sure how long the DH pushup takes and how many laps i’d get in. Any thoughts on a very vague post? sorry!

Probably depends on what you do with Katy as to what you want to do after. There’s a fireroad up the middle that takes you from the bottom to the top of the main official DH runs. The first bit is pretty steep and a lot of people push that bit (very much rideable if you can be bothered) But the rest is fine. Maybe 15 mins bottom to top so in an afternoon you could get quite a few runs in. The blue is ok but I can’t get that excited about it. The red (freeminers) with the extension has some ok bits on it but the second half of the extension drags on and on imo.

There’s an off piste bit called the frying pan which isn’t much outside of the main trail centre – I’d be inclined to have a play on that and the official enduro trails which are along the same fireroad (you cross a proper road to gee t to frying pan). If you download trailforks there are a reasonable number of trails on there and just explore.

If you don’t mind cycling a bit further Dowys is fun, fast and flowy.

Personally, I’d do a bunch of runs of sheepskull and flatland til I got tired. With only a short time, I wouldn’t want to spend any of it exploring/getting lost, those are easy to find and really super bloody good.

Depends what you’re after, if you want some XC style stuff, then the blue/red will give you that, if you want to do DH runs then get up the push up path and do that stuff, at the beginning of Ski Run you have the tabletops you can practice on, GBU has the first section you can play on and so on, or you can do full runs.

You could also mix and match, first climb of the red, up until that steep bit to the fireroad, then head along but go past the red and head towards launchpad and do that.

I’ve done it a few times, you can mess about at the top half for ages, or head over to Y2K/Elephant Man which are good fun as well.

Sounds like there’s plenty of stuff close by to play around on. The thinking being whatever we cover in the coaching i’d like to practice more of on different trails to make it sink in more and it seems there’s plenty of scope for that. It’s good to know the DH runs and the pushup are feasible too. Thanks all 🙂

When I did some coaching with Katy we used bits of a few of the downhill runs off that middle fireroad. Mostly a bit of ski run and a bit of sheepskull. Loads of bits round there that are quite rooty and technical. The enduro runs just outside the main centre are also good for that sort of thing.

Yeah if it’s your first time and you’ve only got a few hours I’d say stick with the official downhill trails. You can spend weeks looking for the rest of the trails in the forest.

We used Y2K and Elephant Man when I was on a coaching session with Katy.

Ask Katy Curd, sure she’ll be able to point you in the right direction