A blog about anything and everything BikeTrials by a wannabe biketrial rider, who is 50++ years old, that was born in Sibu, grew up in Miri, studied in Canada and now settled in Bangi. Yet he is still searching for that something... maybe the Spiders from Mars.
After about a 2 years hiatus, I managed to get the boys interested in BikeTrials again. It took some convincing and inspiring videos to get them off their game consoles and out of the house.
In the 2 years, they have grown much taller. The younger one is now able to grip the handles and brakes firmly but still lack the strength to hold the brakes over a sustained period. Over the next couple of months, I hope to get them into a training regime. More updates to come. Cheers!!
Took me a while, but I finally managed to get my 14 years old son, Joel, interested in BikeTrials. He is a pretty quick learner. The track-stand is not very consistent yet, but he has already started to learn pivoting. He has been complaining that his fingers, palm and arms are aching, so that is a good sign.
Overall, I am very impressed with his progress and I can see that he is already very pleased with himself... LOL. Now he is so excited and motivated that he wants to start a BikeTrial club in his school.
Lets see how he does in the months ahead. I will be blogging his progress as he learns new stuff.
Finally managed to get on my Monty. It's not too bad. The skills are still there. It's true. Once you know how to ride a bike you can't forget.
It felt kinda rigid at first. Then the muscle memories kicked in and it is almost like I have never stop riding... lol. Stamina still sucks though.
I keep wanting to lose weight, but it's a tough fight, with me losing in spades. My rational is that maybe if I can lose 10kg, then the bike is like that much lighter. I am now stuck at 85kg. And the ideal weight for my height is 75kg. Ways to go.
Anyways, I am gonna make a come back. And hopefully I will be able to get in shape to finally nail the side hop and pedal up.
Yes, its been like forever since I got on my trial bike. I could not even remember when. The bike has been sitting in a corner of my dining room gathering dust.
Work, back problem and lack of motivation to exercise were my frequent excuses. Lately, I have been traveling a lot. Been in and out of Abu Dhabi, Jakarta and Bandung, Indonesia.
It's time for me to get off my ass and get back in the game. And so today, after work, I went to Sungei Way's bike shop and got me a new pair of 661 gloves.
Hopefully, the gloves will motivate me to get on my bike tomorrow.
Finally, I am back on trials again. I have been searching for a used 20" trial bike for more than 8 months. I received a call on Tuesday from a friend (Sean), that there was a Monty 219 Kamel on sale in an online classifieds. That afternoon, I got in contact with the owner and bought the bike immediately... LOL.
Coincidentally, the previous owner was someone I knew from Biketrials Malaysia (http://biketrial.ning.com). He had given up on trials after sustaining wrist injuries from riding. The bike was in tip-top condition. The only thing missing was a pair of pedals.
The 219 Kamel without the seat. When I ride, I will remove the seat :-)
The 219 Kamel with the seat.
The Exustar pedal. I really liked it.
The very next day, I bought a nice pair of Exustar pedals and rode for 3 hours after I reached home. Really out of shape, I could feel the muscles burning and aching after a couple of minutes... giving me happy thoughts... yeah... good to be back... Hahaha.
The wooden pallets at my house were in pretty bad condition, weak from fungal scourge. I walked through all the pallets testing the integrity. Almost all failed.
Not gonna risk it, I will have to set aside a weekend just to clear out all the rotten pallets. And hence, begin anew to set things right for riding. In any case, for me it is part of the fun and excitement... LOL.
I am really looking forward to relearn some of the riding techniques (especially the pedal up and the side hop). But after my initial stint, my arms and back are still aching. I want to give them sufficient time to recover before I get back on it.
Here are some tips or lessons you will need to know before you take on bike trials. You would have probably learnt it as you go along, but there is no harm to know about it now, to get a head start and cut short the leaning curve... :-)
One finger braking is a MUST if you want to take on this sport. Whether you are using hydraulic brakes or cable brakes. It is safer and you will have a better grip on the handlebar. Btw, if you have short index fingers, most "good" brake levers are adjustable to suit your fingers' reach.
Pedals with good grip are also a MUST. Depending on the sole on your shoe, you must feel that when you lightly rest your shoe on the pedal, you will get a good grip. This will prevent your shoe from slipping off during critical moments... :-)
Brake setup is critical, especially the rear wheel brakes. Grind the rim and get a brake booster (if you are using rim brakes). There is no such thing as "too much braking" in trials... LOL.
Depending on the pedals, you can quickly wear down the sole and side of your shoes. So far, I have not found a pair that can last me a year... LOL. So get a pair that you are comfortable with. Personally, I prefer a flexible sole.
I am trying out this new pair of Puma. The sole is flat and slightly hard. I hope the sole will get softer as I ride more.
Without a shin guard? You are asking for major grief! If you are using pedals with metal studs, I seriously suggest you get a nice pair of shin guard.
What can I say? Depending on the type of grips on your handlebar, gloves are essential for extra protection and grip. Some riders do not like gloves... but like I said, it really depends on the grips on your handlebar. Due to my sweaty palms, I need to use it for protection and better grip :-)
You can do without the rest.... BUT you cannot do without a helmet!! Can never say this or hear this enough! Never ride trials without helmet!!!
Most of the time, new riders (including myself during that time) will just jump into learning the basic trial techniques without being aware of how important some of the safety preparations are.
I wish I had started off with knowing some of the above tips, instead of learning while I went along. Would have saved me some grief... LOL.
For more than two months after I sold my 20" Monty, I have not been riding. Last weekend, I managed to get back to trials again on my 26" Echo. It was extremely tiring and I felt really clumsy handling the 26". All this while, I have been training and riding the 20".
In fact, I was trying to sell my Echo 26" for a while now, thinking that I could then focused on riding the 20" Monty. After advertising on all the online classifieds, I received a couple of enquiries, but no takers. Part of the reason was that I did not budge on the price... LOL.
In the end, I decided to let fate choose for me... LOL. That is to let the next person who wanted to buy a second hand trial bike choose which one he wanted, the 20" or the 26". And I will just concentrate on riding whichever bike is left behind. Turns out that the next person that wanted a trial bike, wanted a 24"... LOL...
After a couple of emails, Daniel decided to go for the 20" Monty. I was sad to see the bike go, but it was necessary as it was the only way for me to focus.
And so, last Saturday I was back on trials, this time 100% on the 26" Echo. I decided to make a movie of my ride to motivate me... LOL. I spend two and a half hours shooting 30 minutes of video footage, which I later edited into a 2 minutes video... LOL. The whole process was a great workout :-)
After a while into riding I was starting to get a proper feel of the 26" bike. It was slightly heavier than the 20". The feel and size of the wheels made the ride surprising easy as I could easily roll over gaps... LOL.
Last night, I was back on the 26" again. Essentially, I had to almost relearn all the techniques again... re-adjusting and compensating for the differences. I should be able to get use to it in no time... Heheh.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video. My whole body is still aching from the rides, especially my shoulders and arms.
After riding and training on these wood benches, I strongly feel that they are the perfect training accessory that every BikeTrial beginners should get... LOL.
Basically, the bench is about 20" high and 43" long. The width is about 12" at the top and 30" at the base. And so today, I made a short video to demonstrate what one can do with a single bench.
I am pretty sure that anyone else can probably do more than what I have shown in the video... LOL.
To a beginner like me, just repeatedly doing some of the basic moves will cause me to huff and pants like mad... LOL. Although my stamina is improved, there is still a lot of room for improvements... Hahah.
Nevertheless, I do hope that other BikeTrial beginners will make it a point to make one, two or three of these mobile wood benches for their own learning and training.
I am pretty sure that they will also come to appreciate the wood benches like me :-)
I finally managed to learn the Rear Side Hop in the "correct" way... LOL. That is... if I am right footed, I should side hop to the left. Previously I managed to rear side hop as well... but to the right... hahah. After being told my a friend, I decided to stop practicing the side hop all together... so that I could restart and learn all over again... HAHAH.
And today, I managed to do it!!! Three times, nonetheless... LOL.
Of course, I still need a lot of practice to be able to rear side hop consistently and also HIGHER!!! LOL... from watching the video, I could tell that I need to get a nice balance on the rear wheel first, before hopping up. And that I should maybe bend my knee more too.
I have also been trying to learn to pedal-hop up a bench and then pedal-kick from one bench to another. The tough part was to balance on the first bench before pedal-kicking to the next bench. Those pros made it look so easy!!! And here I am struggling :-)
Anyway, it was a great Sunday for my trial progress. Salute!
Managed to get some quality ride time today. Started late in the evening and then heavy rain prevented me from training on my usual wood pallet sections.
So I decided to practice pedal-hopping up a narrow bench. Pedal-hopping onto a stack of wood pallets is not a problem, but pedal-hopping onto a narrow wooden bench required more finesse... LOL.
Basically, I wanted to be able to do the static pedal-hop up the bench and the more dynamic pedal-hop onto the bench and then balance with only the rear wheel on the bench before pedal-kicking down to the other side.
Do the Monkey!
So while I was practicing, I told my 9 year old son, Joel, to help me take some videos so that I could analyze and see what I was doing wrong later. But as I was watching the videos later, I realised that he was singing a song lyric over again and again, "do the monkey"... LOL. It was hilarious... so I decided to make a short video clip... Hahaha.
Hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did while making it... LOL.
Anyway, my goal is to be able to pedal-hop onto the narrow bench, maintain balance on the rear wheel, and then pedal-kick to another narrow bench about 3 to 4 feet away. Gonna try it this weekend... :-)
Every so often I keep asking myself, "What's next?" Do I continue to just practice what little biketrial skills I already know to refine them or should I start learning new skills?
I get immense satisfaction from being able to learn a new trial riding skill and then honing that technique until I could do it consistently. But sometimes, it gets monotonous... LOL. Which is why, practice riding a "section" is so important... it allows me to use a combination of techniques and skills I have painfully acquired to come together in a symphony of movements that allows a rider to finish a section smoothly.
In the end, I always find out that it is not the lack of techniques or skills that prevent me from finishing an imaginary "section" that I predetermined. It is rather, my physical fitness (and fear of falling) that I call to question! LOL... I watched those YouTube videos and I always wondered how the heck those trial riders do it??? Never fail to amaze me... LOL.
The bench I made from the wood pallets. It was important that when I land on the bench, it will not budge or slide away. This was my biggest fear factor... LOL. Btw, I made 4 of these benches.
Anyway, I have been rebuilding the wood pallet sections in my house. In my last blog post, Homemade BikeTrial Training Park, I mentioned going around hunting for wood pallets and making benches. I had been planning to refine my pedal-kick. I needed to be able to pedal-kick from one bench to another and I wanted to do it consistently (you always see those riders do it so effortlessly in the videos... LOL). Anyway, watch the following video for my attempts... LOL.
I just needed to be able to do it three times. It was sort of a rule of thumb told to me by my buddy, Syarul, whom was told by Walton of BikeTrials Singapore... LOL. And so I did it three times... Hahah.
After that, two Saturdays ago, I went on a Wildgeeks cross-country riding re-union in FRIM. It was great riding and hanging out with the guys. Except for the fact that I had a pretty nasty crash... LOL. Ripped some skins off my left calf and had to get 4 stitches... no biggie, except that it was grouse to see the skin hanging there... LOL.
Photo of the geeks uploaded to Facebook by the John (aka The Rooster).
The 4 stitches... LOL. Photo by John (aka The Rooster). Btw, I told John to Twitpic my wound and say it was a snake bite... wicked!
So no riding for a while! That slight injury at FRIM caused me to be out for more than a week. I had no intention of prolonging the healing of the wound any longer than necessary. After spending so much time looking for the wood pallets, making benches, arranging and rearranging to make the training section, I could only admire it from a distance... more painful than the stupid wound!!! LOL...
Btw, I could not helped it. I have already started riding since Monday... LOL. Yeah... and it had bled a little... why am I so stubborn! Cheers!!!
On June 14th 2008, about 4 months into starting and learning BikeTrials, I brought home my first stack of wood pallets after attending the Red Bull Sponsored BikeTrial in Seremban, Negri Sembilan.
Soon after that, I started practicing on the wood pallets. I set up some mock sections to learn balancing and pedal hops. Gradually, the sections got bigger as my riding improved. I found more pallets and graduated to higher grounds... LOL. And now I have wood pallets stacked all over my house. Some of the pallets have begun to rot and come apart.... not safe to ride on any more. I took the old and rotten wood pallets on my pick-up and managed to dump them at a garbage land fill.
Two weeks ago on April 4th, I went hunting for wood pallets around the Nilai 3 warehouses in Negri Sembilan and found plenty!!!
After driving around some of the abandoned warehouses, I came across a huge stack of giant size pallets.
I packed six of them onto my pick-up and took them home.... in two trips... LOL.
I arranged this stack to hopefully use it to learn and practice the difficult side hop.
I sawed up two of the wood pallets and made them into benches, which I will use to practice balancing and rear wheel hop-up and pedal kicks.
I could also use the benches to stack on top of other pallets to create any challenging section I want... LOL.
This coming Sunday, I am planning to go back to Nilai 3 to get more of the giant wood pallets. Currently, I am thinking of making more benches of various heights.
Since the time when I first started out with training on wood pallets, I have not looked back. I would not have been able to learn so many BikeTrial skills or come this far without those wood pallets.
I am very sure that I am not alone in the quest to built a homemade BikeTrial training ground. I have see countless videos on YouTube and Vimeo of riders, pros and otherwise, training right at their own backyard... :-)
And thus... I am really looking forward to this Sunday. Gonna grab some more wood pallets and built me a BikeTrial Training Park... LOL.
So what is this thing about the need for BikeTrial shoes? Recently, a fellow trial rider bought a pair of Monty BikeTrial shoes. I have been thinking about getting one for a while now. The design looked slick and beautiful, and I think probably very light and comfortable. The reason why I have not bought a pair yet, was because the price tag was too steep! (At least for me... LOL. I could buy a whole bunch of bike parts for that price... LOL.)
The Monty trial shoe at a hefty price tag of about MYR400 or £89.99. Ain't it a beau?
Since I started trial in 2008, I have gone through at least 3 pairs of normal shoes. They get worn out pretty fast, especially the sole and the side of the shoe near the ankle. And so early this year in January, I bought a 4th pair, which was really a cheap. Cost me about MYR29. Anyway, by February, the shoes looked like this:
As you can see they are pretty worn out. So now I am looking for a new pair of shoes for trials.... HAhah.
BikeTrial Shoe Safety Feature
Anyway, here are some of my personal experiences, which I wanted to share, that sort of explained why trial shoes are designed in certain ways... like the pair of Monty trial shoes above.
1. No Shoe Laces!
This one is a biggie! One time, while I was trying to pedal up onto a platform, I slipped on the pedal and my shoe lace was caught on the pedal's grip (see following photos). Hence, I could not use my feet effectively to counter balance myself and landed badly. Luckily my injuries were very minor.
Now imagine those pros in a competition, the sections would be hard and punishing. They cannot afford to let something like a shoe lace getting tangled on something to screw up their ride! I think this is the reason why the Monty trial shoes (and probably all cycling shoes) were designed without laces and instead used Velcro to fasten the shoe.
2. Cover the ankles!
Very often, my ankles get injured when I accidentally hit them against the side of the bike frame. During tournament, it is compulsory for riders to wear a pair of shoes that cover the ankles. I can totally understand why this rule is necessary.
3. Thick sole!
Trial bike platform pedals are required to have "super" grip... LOL. I think we all can understand why. This will enable the rider to get a good control of the bike. Almost 100% of the rider's ride is dependent on his feet getting a good grip on the pedals. Hence, the need for the shoes to have thick sole and not too soft that it gets damaged easily. A rider also needs to be able to "feel" the pedal beneath his feet. I have had 2 pairs of shoes that had worn out at the sole, to the extend that I could really feel the pedal's "teeth"... LOL.
And so, now I am on the hunt for a new pair of shoes for trials. Probably something like the one below.
This pair belonged to my son. Looking at it, I think it fit the above safety criteria. The hunt is on... :-)
Yesterday, my wife came out of the blue and said that she wanted to go cycling. I was like, "Er... is something wrong with you today?" Exercises of any sort has never been on her mind... no way! Even getting her to go for a walk around the neighborhood was almost impossible... LOL.
And today she wanted to go cycling! In the end I convinced her to try out BikeTrials, or at least just learn the track-stand... LOL. She told me that she wanted to change her lifestyle and start exercising, and lucky for me, she was convinced that cycling was the way to go... :-)
I told her that learning track-stand will be just as tiring as cycling a few laps around the neighborhood. And so, I took out my old cross-country bike. I was convinced that the center of gravity for the cross-country bike was low and thus, it would be easy for her to learn track-stand on that bike.
She tried to track-stand on the cross-country bike with much difficulty (incidently, it was the same bike I used, when I first started learning BikeTrials). The above video showed how she struggled to even balance for 5 seconds. Btw, if you are wondering why she was using slippers instead of a pair of shoes, lets just say that she was just plain stubborn... LOL.
After sweating and trying to track-stand on the cross-country bike for a while, I decided to let her try the 20" Monty 221PR. I figured, maybe, just maybe she will do better on the 20". If you watch the above video, you will see that she managed to track-stand for about 30 seconds! And this was just one of the many videos which I took that showed her balancing up to 30 seconds... :P
Damn... this was just too damn easy for her... and unfair!!! It took me quite a long time to learn to track-stand properly! And it took her just about an hour to pick up the skill? How come? Time to up the ante!!! Heheh!!
Hmm... lets see how she would do on my Echo Pure; very high center of gravity... will be tough... I thought. So, out came the 26" Echo Pure, and I got her to try it out. Honestly, I was quite blown away. The following video shows her track-stand on the 26" for more than 1 minute 30 seconds!!!!
How come? How come? What is the meaning of this??? I still have not figure it out yet... hmmm... maybe tomorrow, I will get her to try again. Beginner's luck lah... cheh!
I was back at learning the pedal up again last Sunday. This time, I added an additional pallet, bringing the stack to 4 wooden pallets. The previous Sunday, I was training on 3 wooden pallets.
This time I was pretty single-minded. I did nothing but the pedal up. At first, it was difficult to get on top of 4 pallets, but once I could get up the first time, it was easier after that.
Learning to "pedal up" onto 4 wooden pallets.
After a while, I realised that I could not pedal up and land on just the rear wheel. It felt more like a bunny hop... except that I "pedal up" into the bunny hop, instead of "rolling" into a bunny hop. Did I say that correctly? Hmm...
How the heck do those guys do it? Here is a video of Wong Xu to show exactly what I want to be able to do... LOL.
And here is a video from Trashzen:
While writing this post and watching the videos, I realised that I was going about it all wrong! I should not be learning to pedal up higher, but rather lower, to get the technique correct first. Yes... nail that rear wheel down first!
I think that's what I am going to do this coming weekend :)
Never thought I would be interested in pallets, let alone those that are made of paper, which I thought was pretty damn cool! I saw an advert on this blog that promoted this company called DeFrazer that made compress paper pallets. They have offices in Malaysia and Singapore.
DeFrazer manufactures the Green Pallets, which they described as:
"It is with economically light and high strength quality using recycle paper, glue, and staples (when it is necessary).In addition, the outer layer of GREEN PALLET is made of craft paper and test liner which prevents moisture penetration What is more, we can also include an element that made out GREEN PALLET water proofing. The weight of GREEN PALLET is at approximately 8 to 12 kg which means lighter than wooden (range from 20 to 40 kg), plastic (range from 12 to 45 kg), and metal (more than 50 kg) pallet."
On their web site, they even have a DIY section, where they showed how a Green Pallet can be assembled.
Now if only I can get my hands on a few of these and test them out with my bike. First thoughts are that the Green Pallet will not last. The fact that the bike will pedal scratch and abuse the pallet with constant hammering and knocking, will probably turn the pallet into paper pulps in a couple of weeks... LOL.
As of now, more than half of the wooden pallets I have, had been repaired numerous times. Some of them have been infected with fungus, slowly eating the wood inside out. With the constant rain, the deterioration just gets worse... :-(
I guess it's time to call up my friends in Kepong to reserve some really nice wooden pallets for me... LOL.
Last Sunday afternoon was a beautiful day. To me, a beautiful day is clear blue sky with partial cloud cover... LOL, but not the thunder storm-type of clouds. Just enough to provide more than an occasional shade from the Sun. In other words, it is a perfect day for BikeTrials!
I had not been training the pedal up for a long while now. My plan for that day was to get back to it. Up to now, the consistency in the pedal up is still elusive. The last time I trained the pedal up was back in September 2009.
And so that Sunday, I dedicated my time to the Pedal Up. This time, I up the ante a bit. I added another wooden pallet to make it 3 pallets high. But the wooden pallets kept shifting due to the enormous amount of pressure each time the rear wheel landed. So instead of just 3 pallets, I stacked up 8 pallets, 5 pallets at the back to support and prevent the pallets from moving. Check out the following video.
Relentless!
During the training, I discovered that there were two main things that affected my pedal up; the position of the hand brakes and the position of the handle bar. I will explain the details in a another blog post, but they sure affected my performance.
A Sunday afternoon of fun with BikeTrials.
It was a fun and satisfying afternoon. Looking forward to this coming weekend... LOL.
Finally had the chance to relax and ride some trials. What better day than on Christmas day itself... LOL. I did this in the last Christmas as well... :-)
Kids were excited about going to their aunt's place for Christmas dinner. The sky was slightly cloudy... just enough to hide the sun and provide the shade from the heat to make it a perfect day for trials :-)
After about 40 minutes into the session, I decided to shoot some videos and edit them into a movie.... Hahaha. Not exciting like those on Youtube. But it's still progress for me... LOL.
Tired as hell.... but loving every minute of it... Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :-)
There is just no easy way to learn the Pedal Up. I have watched countless videos and read various tutorials from forums around the net. This has gotta be one of the most difficult technique for me to learn in BikeTrial.
I was quite methodical about it. I had surmised that in order to learn the Pedal Up, one must start with the Zap Tap, then the Touch Up (on a 20"... LOL) and then progress to the Pedal Up. They all required one common thing... proper foot positioning on the pedals.
Proper Pedal Footing
I am a right-footer, which meant my right foot is the fore foot on the pedal. And so the starting position for my right foot pedal would be at the 4 o'clock position and my left foot would be at the 10 o'clock position.
Here is a video of a Pedal Up shown to me by Wong Xu (from China). We were riding at the Putrajaya Bike Park two weekends ago and I took the opportunity to ask him to execute the move as slowly as he possible could.... LOL. See the following video, he just made it look so easy!!! LOL.
-----
Since Wong Xu was a right-footer as well, it was easy for me to see how it was done.
Dood! You Gotta be Dynamic
Later that week, I tried to follow the steps shown in the video. I could bring up the front wheel, but I just could not commit totally to pedal kick with my right foot when the time came. It required a very dynamic pedal kick on the right foot to bring the rear wheel onto the wooden pallet's edge.
Chicken Shit and Then Some
I chickened out always at the last moments... LOL. In fact, I had decided to forgo learning the Pedal Up altogether.
Yesterday, I was learning the pedal hops, pedal kicks and basically riding the home-made sections for an hour or so. I did not know what made me do it (I was dead tired and ready to call it a night)... without thinking, I decided to just try the Pedal Up. I managed to bring the front wheel up and committed to pedal hard on my right foot. To my surprise, I managed to bring the bike up and land two wheels on the double stacked wooden pallets.
Stoking the Adrenalin
The lack of sleep (woke up at 6:00am that day), tiredness and whatever fatigues went away that moment... LOL. I had already taken off my shirt and ready to pack it in... and now... I was totally stoked!!! Wow! I felt the motion and the "groove" of the move. I just had to continue. I wanted my body to remember the move!!!! HAhahaha.
And so, I called Joel to bring out the video camera to document my Pedal Up learning progress... LOL. The following video showed only the successful attempts out of probably a hundred failed or pathetic attempts... HAhah.
A 2 minutes video of a few hours of learning. The still elusive Pedal Up.
Today, I was supposed to go riding with Wong Xu, Syarul and Aris in the Shah Alam Lake Park. But the rain got the better of us and I decided to cancel it. Instead, I went looking for a pair of screws long enough to install the Echo brake booster for my 26" (which had major brake problems).
Anyway, after that I decided to continue learning the Pedal Ups as shown in the video above. Now, I have a bruised buttock, injured elbow and a fistful of blisters and callouses.
Almost got a cramp on my left thigh while writing this blog... need a break. Gonna skip riding tomorrow.... I hope... LOL.
Last Saturday, I went riding trials in the Putrajaya Bike Park with Wong Xu of China. He had only been in Malaysia for about a month. He found my phone number from the BikeTrial Malaysia website and called 2 weekends before. I could only arrange for us to ride last Saturday.
We met up at the Cyberia Condos next to MMU and headed to the Putrajaya Bike Park. He told me that he was expecting to find a lot of BikeTrial riders in Malaysia. He was quite surprised when I told him that I know of less than 10 riders. Anyway, Wong Xu had been riding for more than 5 years in China. So, I took this opportunity to ask him to coach me on some of the skills.
Rulong Trial Bike. Made in China. Wong Xu has modified his hydraulic brakes to use water instead of hydraulic fluid. Cool!
The Pedal Up
I have been trying to get this right for the longest time, stacking up the wooden pallets, viewing all the related videos, and still not getting anywhere. And so I decided to put off learning and try later. But now I have Wong Xu to explain and show me, I am stoked again... Hahahah.
Wong Xu doing the pedal up as slow as he can to show me the technique.
Here in this video, Wong Xu explained to me how and where my foot should be placed.
The Pedal Hop
I had never really taken this technique seriously as I never had any problem learning it. That is, until riding on undulating or rocky sections... LOL. All this while, I had been learning and practicing on flat and level ground. Now I have a new respect for it!
Wong Xu showing me how I should practice the pedal hop. He said that this would be a very useful technique, especially when used in combination with other techniques. Useful for riding many different types of terrain, especially rocky sections.
Gapping on Rear Wheel
I have been practicing minor "gapping" on stacks of wooden pallets. But my goal was never to see how far I could gap. I was still trying to get comfortable with balancing on the rear wheel and pedal kicking across pallets. Until Wong Xu told me, I had not realised that for long distance gap, you do not actually use the pedal drive train to gain the distance, but rather just simply compressing the rear tire just as you make the jump. I gotta keep that in mind when I decide to try it... LOL.
Wong Xu demonstrating the long distance gapping technique.
All said and done, since that day, I simply did not have the time to ride. This whole week had been super rushed and busy. Anyway, Wong Xu called me up today and asked if we would be going riding this Saturday. I have decided to take him to Bukit Komanwel to ride some rocks... :-)
If anyone of you are interested, please let me know.
Btw, the Putrajaya Bike Park is still under construction. They are still working on the dirt jumps and ramps overlooking the skate park area. We were riding at the skate park area. Quite a nice place to practice.
Posts
