Your riding

muddyfunster – Member

cynic-al – Member

How do you rate yourself riding off road? (DH style riding excepted).

Hi Al, not to stir sh*t but why DH excepted?

Only cos most of us are xc riders and are **** at DH!

Happy to hear from DHers…

I follow singletrackmind about.
I used to be brave enough to try dodgy stuff, but don’t bother anymore.
Love it though.

You can see why there is a massive market for good coaching. So many riders feel they are lacking in bike skills, me included.

Fat lazy and slow these days. Although I can rise to the occasion if need be. Here’s me riding my all mountain steed with blown 2Step Lyric down one of Whistlers signature freeride trails [cough]B-Line[/cough]. Gets arguably more interesting after 3.45….

How do you rate yourself riding off road?

Easily distracted, given to singing inappropriate songs during technical descents, limited to routes near good pubs.

You can see why there is a massive market for good coaching. So many riders feel they are lacking in bike skills, me included.

No way I ‘m paying someone to teach me to ride my bike!

Slow, unfit, technically incompetent, but mostly lucky … pretty much like I’ve always been.

Not helped by near continual stop-starting to take photographs, or to look over hedges and at interesting things on the side of the trail and to talk to wildlife / trees / farm animals as I go along.

… but I’m happy, and that’s the main thing. 😉

Out of practice….. 🙁

However before about march, v good tech climber, not the fastest climber (but not bad)

Generally pretty good on dh/ tech, have learnt that I don’t need to brake for much except corners and enjoy drops and rock gardens etc. Had a pretty nasty crash earlier in the year jumping and now have the fear around jumps. (esp those with a curved launch ramp, if U view from the side) planning to try and get jedied nxt year and sort jumps and get me out of my road bike mindset

Can’t really race xc as I never push my body hard enough and am only competative when I know ill win 🙂

Would quite like to try an enduro race, dh racing without the massive jumps.

I’d say Im pretty good. I’ve got the 4 main core skills dialled:

Bunny hops (english & amercian style), endos, wheelies and skids.

Ive cleared all of the jumps in the Glentress Freeride park (I even X-upped them all once, nearly got sponsorship off my mum after I did that)

Ive done quite a few bike rides that have been over 100 miles in length

I have ridden all of Llangdegla (including the black runs) without getting off and pushing (on a 1×9 setup on a hardtail)

I’ve nailed some pretty good 360 tabletops (into a foam pit)

And I’m ot to bad at endurance events either – managed an “all nighter” at Burnley skatepark with only a rest for pizza at about 1am.

I think my only weak point is modesty really.

Average low… Usually around the bottom half of any enduro I do. Lower down if I ddo XC.

I just like riding my bike. Don’t really compare myself with anyone else. I think I’m probably quite slow. But it’s not about that. Most people are faster on here than I am. In fact I’m faster on here than I am. I am good at crashing though, judging by Saturday’s performance.

The downhills have got steeper and the rocks are bigger than I remember them from 20 years back when I rode all the time. Having recently got back into riding longer / bigger routes I’m quite pleased with my pace on regular trails. Not into the technical stuff now, I’m aiming to increase distance offroad now.

I’m a 6’4 17stone ogre that used to snap bikes in half often.
Got fed up of having rear wheels built every 4 months so decided to become smooth.
Find it really works for me.
Wish my trails went past reflective shop windows.
Woof woof.