Not as easy as they look are they!

They’ve just built one down the road from me so I threw my mtb in the back of the car this morning (turns out it fits easily with the front wheel off) and thought I’d be manualing and busting out whips for half an hour.

15 minutes later I was covered in sweat, done about 10 laps and hardly managed to get both wheels off the ground at the same time.

I’ve spent the last half hour watching GMBN videos on youtube and I’m steeling myself for a winter down there.

My issue is the take off and landings are really steep and I get the fear.

Skills day

(First! yes get in there…!)

Shopping for one, I dropped many hints around fathers day that I wanted to go on the jumps and drops course that chase skills do. Not sure there’s enough jumps over the chase though TBH.

Prawny, new one at the old athletics stadium?

Thats the one. Was quiet at 6 oclock this morning 😆

Told my other half how they looked effortless when you were good on them. Then demonstrated that I wasn’t 🙂 (Fod pump track and I was on a gnarpoon which didn’t help)

Do you actually do any wheels-off-the-ground action on a pump track? Surely you can’t pump while in the air so will lose speed. On the subject of the FoD track, anyone pumped a couple of laps? I couldn’t carry enough speed for the climb up the entry ramp on type quick go I had and needed a little pedal

Do you actually do any wheels-off-the-ground action on a pump track?

depends how good you are. I can get off the ground – it slows me down. the cool kids speed up.

Really looking for one near Woking …. It won’t hurt my skilz at all… but Jnr really needs a proper pump track badly… should be simples to stop him pedalling if i take the chain off … 👿

is the idea being that you don’t pedal you just ‘pump’? and what exactly constitutes a ‘pump’?

Dude, if you have to ask you won’t understand… 😉

Think of sitting on a swing in a park and getting it going without a push from anyone else. That’s kind of how a pump track works except there are less swings and more bicycles 😆

They’re good fun but jolly hard work if you’re crap like me.

What you need is a race BMX. The skill of the kids who can ride pump tracks well on these is amazing. Whole laps, getting faster each time, without pedalling. My lad can do it. I can’t.

I do however have a 24″ “cruiser size” race BMX Up for sale now that I’ve proved that point

[video]https://youtu.be/2L8gWksiHDM[/video]

This is not me showing how it should be done. I can pump round the whole way without pedalling, so I’m part of the way there, to the extent I was going too fast to be comfortable down the back straight, if I could manual properly I’d have been going the right speed, still too slow to jump properly.