Playing catchup

Last week I tried using the helmet camera when I was following Gordy though some of the singletrack at Daisy. Results were mixed, although it was an interesting experience trying to ride whilst keeping focus on someone who was a couple of seconds ahead of me on the trail. The most interesting part was how he kept gapping me, pulling ahead mainly as we exited the corners, despite the fact that he was riding a fully rigid bike and taking it steady for the filming. He's a far better rider than me - I just don't have that race heritage -  and he knows the trails a lot better than me but I think the main reason is that I break down the track into discrete chunks and gather myself between each one. Ride a corner, settle, roll over a log, settle, ride another corner, settle. In those 'settle' periods I'm grazing the brakes and that's what is losing my momentum. Something else to work on.

He took it easy, I got my best time down that first trail!

Incidentally, I used Youtube's stabilisation tool to smooth out the video. It works, but it also keeps shifting the image around inside the frame so parts roll out of frame. Here's the same video without the stabilisation...

Which do you prefer?