Well, the first training ride was last Sunday. It went great. My son was keeping up with the fastest kids, riding cleanly, and hitting the biggest jumps and drops. Jumps and drops are not really part of kids racing, but they are important to my son. Then he went to a friends house and broke his arm on their trampoline. So, the season is over for him after one practice. They will start back up in the late winter and he will be healed up and ready to go.
We did have good success riding the training loop for speed. Beyond that we just tried to ride everything faster and faster. We did a decent mountain climbing ride and he was catching and passing almost all of the adults on the trail that day.