So, are y'all learning heaps about MTB terms?  Ok, that's good.  Here's today's one then.

Case/casing/to case - To attempt a jump but land short of the downramp.  On double jumps if you land one wheel either side of the lip of the down ramp it is called a 50/50 case or crank case.

I'm starting to quite like these blog titles that suggest a sequence of events.  They sometimes give you a bit of an idea about what the post is going to cover - today's is no exception.

To begin with, it didn't matter what I did, I just couldn't find my rhythm today.  That's part of the reason for today's MTB term too.  Today started off ok with a couple of decent runs down Crank It Up, Ninja Cougar and Karate Monkey but then things started to go wrong and I started casing jumps that I've been easily clearing all week.  I couldn't figure it out although I have a feeling the rear suspension of my bike wasn't working quite right as it didn't feel like it was rebounding properly.  This totally threw my game and it just wasn't as fun as it's been so far.

The result of it all was that I got tired quicker than usual and started making amateur mistakes.  My cornering was rubbish and I wasn't hitting the berms right, my confidence was out the window and I was having trouble catching people that I should've been passing at roughly the speed of light.

I carried on and tried to make things right but the inevitable happened - I crashed.  HARD.  Coming down the top section of Heart of Darkness is a section that I really enjoy because it's fast and has a nice double jump just before a cool kink through some trees.  I approached the kink going far too fast, cleared the 2nd half of the double jump and landed with about 3 metres to spare before I should have turned quickly and gone through the gap in the trees.  I didn't make it.  My left shoulder and upper arm slammed into a tree at full speed and instead of switching back for the 2nd half of the kink I got thrown sideways and hit the ground with the full impact arriving in the same spot that had just tried to take the the tree.

High speed crashes are a bit weird as adrenaline is pumping through your body and causing you to make silly decisions.  I made one because I got up and continued riding down Heart of Darkness.  For some reason I didn't feel any pain at that point and I actually cleared the 2 following jumps better than I've done yet.  At the bottom I reevaluated the situation and decided everything was ok.  I jumped back on the lift and headed up to continue riding.

I decided to avoid the trees this time so I headed back down Crank It Up.  Everything was pretty good and I cleared all the jumps without any problems, passed people and even managed to rail a couple of berms, something I'm still learning to do properly.

At the bottom of Crank It Up is a transitional section that is basically a road.  At the end of this piece of road is a creek with a wooden bridge crossing it (you can see everything I'm talking about in this post in the various videos I've posted - let me know if you want me to let you know how to view these bits).  As I approached the bridge I was doing close to 50kph and my rear tyre decided it'd had enough and blew out.  Any cyclist will tell you that tyre blowouts at speed are BAD!  This caused my rear wheel to start fishtailing and instead of going nicely across the creek I hit the bridge and was catapulted off the bike ... and into the creek.

So now the left side of me was soaked and bloody sore.  All I could do was walk the bike back to the shop and call it a day.

So here I am sitting at The Alpenglow with my arm feeling like it's been repeatedly beaten with a baseball bat.  I can't lift it past about 30 degrees without excruciating pain.  Thankfully I know my shoulder isn't dislocated as I wouldn't be sitting here typing this with 1 hand if it was.  Hopefully it gets better but I'm pretty sure I'll be heading for some sort of medical centre tomorrow to get drugs of some sort.

Unfortunately that also means no riding for me tomorrow and possibly no more riding for the rest of this trip unless things improve dramatically.  DAMN!

So that's how today went.  Don't worry, I'm ok ... just in pain.  That's all part of mountain biking though.

I had planned to go and take some photos of the good riders hitting the GLC Drops this evening but didn't do that for obvious reasons.  I did take some photos of it last night though so I've included a couple in this post.  The one directly below this text is a Photoshop experiment I did - it's quite a nice sequence actually.

My Photoshop experiment of one of the riders on the GLC Drops yesterday.

While taking these photos one of the riders approached me and asked to see the photos I'd taken of him.  I showed him and he was very impressed - cool!  I've emailed him a copy and have offered to sell him a high resolution version if he's interested.  Here is the photo.

A rider hitting one of the GLC Drops yesterday. This is Kevin, the rider that wanted a copy of his photo.

I also posted about the Whistler Sliding Centre and Toonies race yesterday as you know and my post has been "retweeted" on Twitter by the official Whistler Blackcomb Twitter people.  AWESOME!  I'm going to see if they're interested in the high-resolution images of yesterday's race too.  :)

I'll write another post tomorrow and update you on how things are.  Here's hoping things improve soon.