A couple of days ago I competed in another bike trials competition. This one had the hardest zones that have been set so far which made for a really fun and entertaining day as people were really forced to push their limits. The one thing that made it so difficult was that it was almost all set in and around the creek of a rainforest and it was REALLY slippery. There were no man-made lines - only natural trials which is really fun.
I’ve been to three of these competitions now and despite getting my worst score so far, I enjoyed this one the most and was most happy with my riding in this one. I was surprised to hear that I actually ended up placing 2nd amongst the bike riders in the intermediate category. Normally, the bikers are able to successfully dab when losing balance but it was often just to slippery to do so this time so it was evened out a little. I did a couple of successful dabs…I’m finally learning how on a unicycle.
I learned a couple of things throughout the day too. I think I’ve improved at doing muni-style rollings hops with strange pedal orientations which was really neccessary in one of the zones which was more like a really steep technical downhill mountain bike run. Also, I learned that I’m able to hop out of tighter situations than I realised. A few times I found myself losing balance with my wheel surrounded by rocks. Usually I’d give up but this time I put in a big effort to launch myself out of it and it worked. I think this is a good progression in my natural trials riding.
I put some clips together in a 1.6MB, 1 minute video. It really shows how relaxed the atmosphere is at these comps and how supportive everyone is.
The video is at - http://gallery.unicyclist.com/albums/albup16/Winter_Series_Bike_Trials_Round_1.wmv
Andrew
