The weather this year has been weird.  Spring came, it left, and as we approach April it looks like January out the window.  But road racing is here and has been taking all of our attention the last few weeks; it was time to revisit the MTB.

The H2H MTB race series kicks off this weekend (check out the TBD calendar for the full schedule), and while most of the team will be in Central Park trying to stay competitive in the Boyd Cup series standings at CRCA Club Race #2, after having a few guys in the top 10 wheels at race #1, its important to keep the big tire bike skills sharp.

So with NYC schools closed and offices closed shortly thereafter, I took the morning to double check the MTB skills and equipment for H2H race #2 at Ringwood in a few weeks.

The Highbridge Mountain Bike Park is an underrated and underutilized gem in northern Manhattan.  About 3-minutes from my apartment, it offers a short but wide variety of technical and flowy XC trails.  Complete with trail signage, water diverting infrastructure, and the beneficiary of hundreds of volunteer hours its hard to beat for a weekday morning rip, or in the instant case, when the roads are not clear to drive 20-minutes north to Westchester's Sprain or Graham Hills.

Everyone needs to be careful this time of year not to be too eager to get out on wet trails as frozen dirt begins to thaw.  One person can cause serious damage to good single track, when mud ruts dry and require digging out entire sections of trail in the spring.  But with 2-4" of snow on top of leaves this morning, it was slippery but no risk to the trails.