Women mountain bike enthusiasts can brush up on their riding skills at the Wood River Valley's third annual Sugoi Dirt Series training clinic scheduled for the weekend of July 8-9.
Registration is now underway at www.dirtseries.com. If you don't have a computer, the folks at Ketchum's Backwoods Mountain Sports, the event host and sponsor, will let you use one of theirs.
The cost for the two-day event is $215.
"It's really cool, and usually it's full by now," said Backwoods clothing buyer Libby Holtz. "But it's not full this year because maybe people don't know about it yet."
The clinic has room for 40 participants. There will be eight instructors, offering a student-teacher ratio of 5-1.
Women aged 19 to 40 plus typically participate.
The training program was developed in Canada by Sugoi, a sports apparel manufacturer, and Rocky Mountain Bicycles.
The session offered in the Wood River Valley, billed as the Sun Valley, Idaho Camp, is only one of three in the U.S. this year. Other camps will be held at Portland and Bend, Ore.
Clinics include group technical discussions, trail rides, fitness and bicycle maintenance sessions and social time.
"We usually go shopping," Holtz said.
Techniques covered at the clinic will include handling switchbacks, braking and descending, high speed cornering, climbing, lifts to get up and over obstacles, wheelie drops, bunny hops, picking and committing to lines, and negotiating planks and bridges.
"They just really improve their biking skills, so if they get into a situation they know how to react," Holtz said.
"Everyone who takes this class gets really excited," she said. "They all come back just raving about it, that it really helps improve their biking skills."
