It's ben quite a long time since I've felt such an "all the gear no idea" ****t as I have this afternoon. Down in Suffolk visiting the inlaws and I thought rather than go for the usual long road ride, I'd take the BFe and hit the local jump spot. I've not got a lot of DJ experience, but I'm fine with big fast "DH" style jumps and gaps and most shonky trail side efforts. Quite happy with 4x courses, all that kinda thing. I was clearing a 25' gap last weekend on my local trails.
So there's me with by far the pimpiest bike, in by far the ponciest gear, not being able to ride a damn thing. I just have no understanding of how to deal with proper steep transitions and how to judge speed. 0.1 mph seems to be the difference between coming up massively short and overshooting massively. After an hour of riding I'd managed to clear one jump a few times, mostly by luck; had 2 humdinger stacks and was leaking quite nicely from both shins and 1 elbow.
Most of the riders were on BMXes although there were a couple of 24" MTBs. Mostly they seemed to be rolling in really slow and just getting loads of effortless pop and height - even the 8 year olds. I know my pop is not great, but I have no idea how to improve it - normally if in doubt I just go faster, but that really doesn't work on steep jumps. I don't want amplitude to start with, I just want smoothness and flow. Then when you're up, how do you point the bike back down to a steep landing? There were a couple of times I made the jump but just didn't have enough weight on the front wheel to control the run out.
So how do they do it...?
Thanks!
