I did a lot of technical stuff yesterday that I've never been comfortable with... and I found myself making little squeaky noises the whole way! I was with my friend Joe who was helping me overcome some of my MTB phobias so to speak and he kept laughing at my noises and facial expressions.

It's really fun to go to a grassy field and set up cones or rocks and slalom around them on the bike. Great practice. Singletrack gets a heck of a lot easier after that!

My conclusions are a lot to do with shifting. I'm shifting constantly on my mountain bike so that the pressure on my feet is just right. When I get to steep uphills, I get into a high gear leading up to it and as soon as I hit it and feel the pressure, I start thumbing my right rapid fire shifters and use as many gears as it takes. The risk of going up in a higher gear is losing momentum completely and ultimately splatting because I'm clipped in. Hahaha... that's happened once or twice before!