Bike Trial Restart on the 26" Echo

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.

Feels great to be back on trials!

A BikeTrial Beginner's Training Bench

Recently I made a few benches out of wood pallets. I published three posts on what I was doing with those benches and why I would go driving around with my pick-up hunting for abandoned wood pallets (Learning to Pedal-hop up a Bench, Homemade BikeTrial Training Park and FRIM, BikeTrials and Snake Bite?: BikeTrial Progress).









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 :-)

Rear Side Hop and Pedal Kicks

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!