Weight Distrobution: Thank You Harvey Minton

I just had the best ride I've had in a long time. It was only 12 miles and it was on paved roads, but it was definitely the best ride I've had in months. Why was this ride so good? Well, I had my first bout with good weight distribution. That's right, I finally found a good spot to place my beer gut while riding.

A few weeks back I attended an advanced mountain biking skills class put on my the Swamp Club and taught by Harvey Minton. One of the topics he touched on was weight distribution. I struggled with the idea of having most of my weight on my pedals while still maintaining a little weight on my saddle and handle bars. I have always put my weight either on the saddle or the pedals, until today that is. For some reason while riding home today I started playing with my position on the bike and just happened to notice that I was picking up speed while riding into the wind fairly easily. I started paying attention to how my legs felt and then I noticed that a lot of the power was coming from my body weight, not just my quads and hammys.

I know this is very elementary but It's a big discovery for me. My average speed was significantly increased on my ride home even though most of it was against the wind. I'm excited to do some more experimenting with this.

Any tips or tricks on weight distribution that you would like to share?